October weather in South Florida is usually a treat, with temperatures beginning to dip and humidity falling to more comfortable levels. But nature also plays a trick on us – this is historically the worst month for hurricane activity, beating out September and August.
Nineteen hurricanes have hit mainland South Florida since 1851, four more than September.
Including hurricanes and tropical storms, 30 systems have impacted the area in October, more than any other month of the season, according to a climatology report by the National Weather Service in Miami.
We’ve had two October hurricanes in recent memory: Hurricane Wilma on Oct. 24, 2005; and Hurricane Irene on Oct. 15, 1999. Wilma made landfall as a Category 3 and tracked northeast through Palm Beach County, knocking out power to 3 million homes, mostly in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Category 1 Irene was notable for its rainfall: 17.45 inches fell in Boynton Beach.
Another remarkable October hurricane in South Florida was Hurricane King, which tracked through Miami and then north toward Lake Okeechobee on Oct. 17, 1950. It was also a Category 3 and packed wind gusts of up to 150 mph.
So – what are we looking at this year? Will we be haunted by the ghosts of Wilma, Irene and King? For now, the tropics look unseasonably quiet. Even the activity in the Caribbean has leveled off.
We do have one area being tracked by the National Hurricane Center – Invest 97, which on Sunday morning was at 17.7N 58.1W, 250 miles east of Antigua. It was moving west-northwest at 10 to 15 mph, and forecasters gave it only a 10 percent chance of developing into a depression or storm by Tuesday.
But even if this system does end up becoming Tropical Storm Otto, models mostly show it curving out to sea before it reaches the Bahamas.
Colorado State University hurricane experts William Gray and Philip Klotzbach won’t do a seasonal wrap until November. But Weather Underground’s Jeff Masters weighed in over the weekend and predicted four to five additional storms this year, with two or three hurricanes. He forecasts three named storms, including two hurricanes (one intense) will form this month, and one additional hurricane will form in November.
“Given the record warm sea-surface temperatures in the Atlantic this fall, the presence of La Nina in the eastern Pacific keeping wind shear lower than average, and the observed increase in late season activity in recent decades, I expect this year’s peak portion of the hurricane season will last until the end of October,” Masters said.
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SIZZLING SEPTEMBER RECORD: We were 2.4 degrees higher than normal for the month, with an average monthly reading at Palm Beach International Airport of 84.1 (high and low for each day, averaged for the month.) That was an all-time record high, easily beating the 1951 mean temperature of 83.33 degrees. September capped the warmest summer ever in South Florida – following the coldest winter.
Tropical Storm Nicole brought the Palm Beach area closer to average rainfall totals for the month, but we still ended up 1.95 inches short.
OCTOBER OUTLOOK: Despite our vulnerability to tropical storms and hurricanes in October, the weather does dry out a bit, with an average 6.65 inches of rain. The record is 18.74 inches in 1965, while 1997 was the driest October on record, with just .56 inches all month.
Cold fronts can drive temperatures into the 40s in October. The record low for the month is 46 degrees, in fact, set in 1968. The record high is 95 degrees set on four dates: Oct. 2, 1989; Oct. 6, 1906; Oct. 8, 1941; and Oct. 10, 1941.
The normal high starts at 87 degrees on Oct. 1 and dips to 83 degrees on Oct. 31. The normal low of 73 degrees falls to 69 degrees by the end of the month.