Hurricane Harbor: Jim Williams Top 20 List of Cities ....for 2025 Hurricane Season. Thoughts on Possible Hot Spots and Tracks.........

Spoiler Alert.

If your city is shown here with a red dot.

You just may be on Jim's list!

More on this map later.

But it's easy to see....

..where a hurricane in the Bahamas could slide up the FL Coast.

Or perhaps criss cross Florida the way Donna did....

Bahamas to FLL to Tampa back to St Aug out to sea.

Then slide up the coast?

Just musing as it's only May.

Today's blog post is about a list that Jim Williams of HurricaneCity fame puts out every year of his top 20 cities for 2025 Hurricane Season. Jim's list has a very good accuracy rate and I've seen city after city on his list be crossed off with eerie accuracy. Accurate would be a word for Jim, as he is very detail oriented, very fact based and spends much time researching through various sources to see which cities are often impacted in similar years (El Nino, La Nina, Neutral) with similar factors and adding in which cities are overdue for impact.

I've known Jim a long time. I know Jim online on various sites, I have watched his shows online during hurricanes before people were doing Facebook Lives or YouTube Live and I know him in person as we have spent time discussing hurricanes, hurricane history and hurricane memories. Nothing like talking to a hurricane friend......it's much like recounting the year your favorite team almost won the World Series or the big trout that got away. And, I'm blessed to know a few people who frequented Jim's Message Board who showed up in Miami to help cut back trees from a house where a Ficus tree bigger than the house collapsed in hurricane all around it. The network of storm chasers and hurricane people online is real and well if you know.........you know. I'll link to the Message Board below if you want to check it out.

So that being said I am going to start here and count backwards as Jim likes to do. You can watch his video on YouTube and hear his exact words, reasoning for these cities and the cities that almost made the list!

#20 Tampa. I know it's always on everyone's list for a landfall and yet it gets lucky time and again avoiding a direct hit. One day.........it's luck will run out. And, yes Milton impacted it but it was not a direct hit.

#19 Great Abaco, Bahamas. Note this is the 1st of 6 cities in the Bahamas and you can clearly make out that cluster on the map above.

#18 Neuvitas, Cuba. I put a map below in case for those of you who don't know the Cuban coastline well.

#17 Gulf Shores, Alabama. A wonderful beachy town that conjures up visions of Jimmy Buffet.

#16 St. Pierre, NewFoundland. A place that you can see doesn't look very tropical, but often feels the fury of a hurricane's wind as it reaches the end of it's road.

#15 Southhampton, Long Island. I have a son who loves trips to Southhampton. Many a hurricane likes to threaten it while on it's way North to .... NewFoundland!

#14 Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I have several kids who live there and I stay there often when visiting. While Hurricane Katrina made landfall "near"the Broward/Miami Dade County Line it is well known in hurricane history circles for getting a strong direct hit in 1947. The NWS map shows it really crossing North Dade, but I digress. As I lived just South of the County Line I got the eye of Katrina .... we all sat outside on little lawn chairs enjoying the fast moving thin clouds and marveling at being in the eye, before the back side hit fast. A wonderful memory.

#13 Eleuthra, Bahamas

#12 Morehead City, NC This is one of my favorite coastal towns. A city that's been visited countlesss times by the eye of a hurricane.

#11 Elizabeth City, NC Just up the road from Morehead City and it makes me wonder if this year there will be a similar pattern as we had last year with storms moving further inland across North Carolina vs just kissing the tip of the Outer Banks.

#10 Andros, Bahamas (lots of Bahamas on this list add in nearby Fort Lauderdale.......hmnn)

#9 Mole St. Nicholas, Haiti There's a map below so you see where it is for reference.

#8 New Orleans, Louisiana. Yes.... Nola and Tampa are both on the list!

#7 Cat Isle, Bahamas. Putting a map here for all these Bahamas cities so you can keep track!

#6 Ponce, Puerto Rico. Worth noting PR has been in the cross hairs for heavy rains often of late.

# 5 St. Augustine, Florida. I have a son who loves this place the way I love Key West.

#4 Bimini, Bahamas. This is a very small place just offshore Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Bimini is 58 Miles off the coast of Miami as a reference. Very, very, very close!

#3 Pensacola, Florida. My Grandma spent time up here when she was young. It's a pretty part of the Florida Panhandle, a world very far removed from Miami that reminds me more of Caroline Beach coastal towns than South Florida.

#2 Nassau, Bahamas

#1 Norfolk, Virginia. If you draw a line from Morehead City to Elizabeth City in NC you would line up well with a hurricane exiting land at Norfolk, Virginia. See map below. I'm not predicting this track I am just saying based on Jim's research it would be totally logical.

If.......May is all about IF

One wonders if a storm could do this track.

Norfolk is a big port city as is Tampa and Nola and FLL.

Just saying good to remember details.

Jim drew a nice little map here.

A map of possible tracks.

So much depends on what is going on regarding the Bermuda High and where it's set up and if we have late season fronts or early season fronts. I saw someone else online put out discussion on the areas close in could be problematic and this would align with what Jim's cities are implying.

Time will tell. I'll be here blogging telling it as I see it and trying to help however I can.

I did ask him about Miami and the cities that missed the top 20 and he said it was up there but didn't make the top 20. It's really hard to split the difference between North Miami Beach and Hollywood Florida it's one area that has no real boundaries or landmarks other than the Hollywood Water Tower off of I-95 being the only marker to tourists they have left Miami. Hey it's a landmark!