Florida Hurricanes, Measured: How Often Each City Has Been Hit Since 1900

Part one of three. Part two is about FEMA's hurricane declarations; part three is about what flooding has cost, claim by claim.

NOAA's best track records every Atlantic hurricane's center and strength every six hours. Running it through one simple rule, the same rule the Calchis trigger backtest uses, gives a count anyone can check: how many storms passed within 100 km of a city while at hurricane strength (64 knots or more), and how many while major (96 knots, Category 3, or more), from 1900 to 2025.

City	Hurricanes	Major	Once every (hurricane)	Once every (major)	Most recent hurricane
Miami	28	11	4.5 yr	11.5 yr	2005
Key West	24	13	5.3 yr	9.7 yr	2017
Orlando	19	0	6.6 yr	—	2024
Pensacola	19	8	6.6 yr	15.8 yr	2020
Tampa	18	3	7.0 yr	42 yr	2024
Fort Myers	17	10	7.4 yr	12.6 yr	2022
Jacksonville	10	1	12.6 yr	126 yr	2016
Tallahassee	8	3	15.8 yr	42 yr	2024

What stands out

Miami has had a quiet generation. Eleven major hurricanes passed within 100 km between 1906 and 1992, Andrew the last of them. None has since, and no hurricane of any strength has passed within 100 km since 2005. Thirty-three years without a major one is long against a record that averages one every eleven and a half.

Fort Myers has had the opposite. Ten major hurricanes, four of them in the last twenty-two seasons: Charley (2004), Wilma (2005), Irma (2017) and Ian (2022), Ian at 138 knots.

Tallahassee's major hurricanes are all recent. Michael (2018), Idalia (2023) and Helene (2024): three in seven seasons, and none in the 118 years before.

Orlando is hit often and never by a major hurricane. Nineteen storms passed within 100 km at hurricane strength; every one had weakened below Category 3 by the time it was that far inland.

Tampa's three are 1921, 1935 and Milton (2024). We replayed Milton through three parametric triggers in a separate case study; the same storm breached one and missed two.

What the record cannot tell you

The wind is the storm's, not the city's. The best track records a storm's maximum sustained wind near its center. A storm counted for Miami may have passed 90 km offshore with its strongest winds on the far side. This is a count of close approaches, not of wind measured downtown.

One hundred kilometers is a choice. A wider circle counts more storms, a narrower one fewer. It is the radius a parametric trigger is often written on, which is why we use it, but it is not the only defensible one.

Counts are not forecasts. “Once every 11.5 years” is 126 years divided by 11 storms. It describes the record, and small counts carry wide uncertainty: three storms in 126 years is not evidence that the fourth is 42 years away.

The early record is thinner at sea, not on land. A hurricane that crossed a Florida city in 1910 was observed; one that stayed offshore may be missing or misplaced. Counts for coastal cities are more complete than the early record as a whole.

For your own address

Any parametric trigger in Calchis can be backtested against this same record on its own terms, and every Florida county has a page built from the federal record: Miami-Dade, Lee, Hillsborough, Escambia and every other county.

Sources: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS), North Atlantic basin, as loaded into Calchis and queried October 7, 2026. A storm is counted once per city when any best-track point lies 100 kilometers or less from the city center at the stated strength, 1900–2025. The 100-kilometer circle is this article's counting rule, not a Calchis model parameter.