2007 Atlantic Hurricane Season - Records and Statistics

Records and Statistics

Only two major hurricanes—storms of Category 3 intensity or higher—formed during the season, the least since the 1997 season, although tied with the 2006 and 2002 seasons. Named storms were active for 33.50 days during the season, the lowest number of active days since the 1994 season. There were only 11.25 days with active hurricanes, the lowest value since the 2002 season. Despite this, the number of days with major hurricanes was above the long-term average. Four named storms made landfall on the U.S. during the year, but damage from those storms totaled to only about $82 million (2007 USD); this was the least damage the U.S. saw from any Atlantic hurricane season since the 1990 season. The season was one of only six Atlantic hurricane seasons to produce two Category 5 equivalent hurricanes, the others being the 1932, 1933, 1960, 1961, and 2005 seasons. The two Category 5 hurricanes, Dean and Felix, had both reached Category 5 strength on two separate occasions, the first time two Atlantic hurricanes have done so in a single season. This was also the first season during which two storms made landfall at Category 5 intensity. When Hurricane Felix was upgraded to a Category 5 storm on September 2, it became the eighth to form in this basin since 2000. This gave the decade more hurricanes of such strength than any other on record.

Hurricane Dean was the first storm to make landfall as a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic basin since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. A dropsonde in the eye of the storm estimated a central pressure of 905 mbar, tying Dean with hurricanes Camille and Mitch for the seventh most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. Dean was the third most intense landfalling Atlantic storm in history (after the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and Hurricane Gilbert of 1988). When Tropical Depression Fourteen was upgraded to Tropical Storm Melissa on September 29, it was the eighth named storm to form in the month of September. That tied a record for the most storms during September, which was first set in 2002. Hurricane Humberto was the first hurricane to make landfall in Texas since Hurricane Claudette in 2003.