Cities Hit With the Most Hurricanes Category 3 or Higher

Weather

Published: July 9, 2024 9:10 am

Hurricane Beryl made landfall along the Texas coast — on the Matagorda Peninsula, about 85 miles southwest of Houston and between Corpus Christi and Galveston — early Monday morning. The storm caused at least two deaths in the area — in both incidents trees fell on homes. Beryl also prompted rescue operations, left over 2 million of customers without power, disrupted flights, and closed oil ports, according to news reports.

Beryl is noted as the earliest Category 5 storm ever recorded in the Atlantic. It already traveled through the Caribbean, over Jamaica, causing at least 11 deaths and widespread destruction. It continued through Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, where it weakened to a tropical storm, then the Gulf of Mexico. It strengthened again to a Category 1 hurricane on Sunday — just before making landfall in Texas. (You can follow Beryl’s path here.)

According to the most recent warnings (as of this writing) from the National Hurricane Center, while Beryl had 80 mph sustained winds when it made landfall, maximum sustained winds have decreased to near 60 mph, with higher gusts. The forecast is for the storm to weaken to become a post-tropical cyclone on Tuesday. The estimated minimum central pressure is 987 millibars. (Also see: Ranking the Most Powerful Hurricanes of All Time.)

Areas in Texas are often slammed with hurricanes, and it is not the first time this particular area has been in the path of one. In general, some cities nationwide tend to experience many more hurricanes than others, and some also experience more powerful ones than others.

Likely not surprising, 29 of the 50 places on the list are in Florida, though several are part of Miami-Dade County. This is the case with other communities on the list, which tend to be in the same general geographical area.

Following Florida, nine of the places on the list are in Texas, eight are in Louisiana, and four in Mississippi. The top ranking three places are all in Florida — one along the Florida Keys in the southern tip of the state (several other places on the list are along the Keys); one is just south of Miami on the state’s east side; and one is south of Naples on the state’s west side.

Methodology

To determine the cities with the most Category 3 and above hurricanes, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data on historical hurricane tracks from 1842 to 2022 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Census places were ranked based on the number of Category 3 and above hurricanes – storm events with maximum wind speed of 111 mph or greater – recorded within their boundaries since 1842. Hurricane tracks and census place boundaries were overlapped spatially using QGIS. Census place boundaries are from the U.S. Census Bureau and are for 2023.

Why are we covering this

Hurricanes are the most damaging natural disasters in the United States, responsible for trillions of dollars in damages and thousands of lives. While destruction is the worst where hurricanes make landfall, they can go far inland or cause considerable damage in their aftermath as tropical storms. It is good to know an area’s propensity to be in the path of such destructive forces.