Hurricane Harbor: 113 Days Til 2026 Hurricane Season Cold Records Being Broken This Winter in the Carolinas and Florida.... Weather History

As a Hurricane Historian... a Weather Historian every fact about a current trend is up for grabs in the research game that goes on in the Off Season. It's 113 days til the start of the 2026 Hurricane Season officially using the June 1st start so this post on X caught my attention. I had to double check, but I knew one year was a crazy busy year and another year was slow and I wasn't sure on the third year. So let's take a quick look in a short blog on Super Bowl Sunday.

Understand that it's been very cold in Raleigh, where we have had multiple events with frozen precipitation and we have piles of snow that's been plowed into piles of snow that look like mini mountains in every large parking lot around. No snow on the ground here, though I do see my neighbor has some in shaded spots in his yard and that's because it's been way below freezing at night. Normally this part of the South waits for the snow to melt and it usually does within a few days. But this has been a real Winter for NC and the "first week of February ranks among the top 15 coldest first weeks of February going back through our historical records" according to the National Weather Service in Raleigh.

1887 I knew was a busy year.

Busy close in = more landfalls.

Many ships had to put into port in Key West that year.

Many on their way to Galveston or Mobile

Or New Orleans.

My family lived in Key West then on Whitehead Street.

I've searched through old records at the library on Fleming.

1887 came after the hyperbusy 1886 Hurricane Season.

Many coastal cruisers ...signs of fronts & curves out to sea.

19 systems, not bad for before satellite imagery!

1903 Hurricane Season.

7 Hurricanes!

Not all that strong but still...

2 USA landfalls.

One went straight to Mexico...

...tho it's referred to as a the Jamaica Hurricane.

That may be relevant but hope not....

No satellite imagery...

Love Weather Maps...

August Cane smashed into the Islands

Beryl like yet stayed low.

High Pressure to the North.

1903 Florida Hurricane

aka other names.

Inchulva was a Steamship...

..that went down.

The high was not kind to Florida ...

..while not strong it was impactful.

This is a hurricane I have researched after reading personal reports from the local "historians" who kept logs, journals and multiple references in local newspapers. It made landfall near Ft Lauderdale and crossed the state damaging the Sugarcane Crops and sliced up into the Panhandle before curving away with an early front. My ancestors lived in the Tampa Bay area, after relocating from Key West and again have seen it written about in Tampa Hurricane History. In the Panhandle it hit crops again and in truth back in the day it didn't have to be a Cat 3 to destroy the crops and Agriculture was the First Florida Land Boom.

Heavy damages along the coast...

...curving in around NJ

I thought it was worth highlighting the 1903 Hurricane as it was a year less talked about than the wild 1880s and the 1910 Hurricane Season that was crazy quiet and yet when you have a Category 5 Hurricane make landfall in October it's remembered forever especially after it looped and was infamous in Cuba.

This hurricane season was brought to you as the reminder of "never trust a quiet hurricane season until it's over" and in this case it was not over until October. Understand this hurricane, shown below, hit Cuba twice after stalling, looping and creating even more misery over Eastern Cuba before moving off with a front towards SW Florida and slowly snaking it's away across Florida before hugging the coastline becoming a huge danger to ships at sea across a wide area. Never trust a quiet season until it's over. Again it's impact in Key West is legendary and while my family did not live there then, they had business interests and were there often. As always any hurricane in the Florida Straits between Florida and Cuba often impacts Key West and it did indeed.

La Brisa was quite the resort...

...before the hurricane.

Note the 1910 hurricane came the year after...

...the 1909 Hurricane.

Back to back years ....

...patterns do happen..

https://www.keywesthistoricmarkertour.org/marker/501 There's a marker with a story you can listen to if you are as into historical markers as I am..

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=243862 Simonton and the beach... where the trolley line ended :)

Watched so many sunrises there with a cup of cafecito from the nearby Mini Mart sitting on the seawall.

So we have 2 busy years and 1 quiet year.

All 3 years Florida was impacted, hit and/or was close enough to cause damages.

Just an entry in my blog that is really my Weather Diary.

Adding this to my Weather Diary online so I can go back and look into this more at another time.

It's been a very cold Winter in Raleigh and while I love a real Winter...it's done a real job on my health in that I have been dealing with headaches from the change of pressure often and more so the heat has been on more and it's a delicate dance between when I use the humidifier and when I do not need it and I'm on medication for a sinus infection and headache medication so I decided to write long today on this as it's both therapeutic and a curiosity that as we get closer to hurricane season we will all look back on the current odd pattern this winter that robbed parts of the West used to being buried in snow tho to be fair few in Montana are complaining and dumped Arctic air all the way down to South Florida and the Caribbean.

And we will also obsess all through March and April about El Nino vs La Nina and the signs that we are seeing and on and on and on it'll go until we begin to see areas that may develop into an early tropical system before the actual start date of June 1st........or not.