At a Glance

Officially, the Atlantic hurricane season ends Nov. 30.However, there have been storms, even hurricanes, after that date.Three percent of Atlantic named storms occur outside hurricane season.

Sign up for the Morning Brief email newsletterto get weekday updates from The Weather Channel and our meteorologists.

T​he Atlantic hurricane season has officially ended. But that doesn't mean you can't have tropical development after November 30, as past history has shown.

Here's w​hat hurricane season means: The six-month June through November "official" hurricane season you're probably familiar with was settled upon by 1965 to take up more than 97% of all Atlantic storms and hurricanes, according to .

This graph shows tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin by day and month from 1851-2022. The June 1 - November 30 hurricane season is highlighted in the warmer background colors. The large white arrow denotes December's fraction of tropical cyclones in that period.

(NOAA/AOML/Hurricane Research Division)

T​he tardy storms: However, there is nothing magical about these season start and end dates.

For purposes of this analysis, we'll focus only on those systems that first became tropical or subtropical storms in December, rather than those which first formed in November, then lasted into December.

According to NOAA's historical hurricane tracks database, 13​ storms since the late 19th century first became storms in December. This last occurred in early December 2013, when formed in the eastern Atlantic Ocean south of the Azores.

T​hat also happened four other times this century, including twice in 2003 (Odette & Peter), once just before New Year's Eve in the record-smashing 2005 season (Zeta), and in 2007 (Olga).

Y​es, even hurricanes: O​nly four of those 13 December-forming storms eventually became hurricanes, each no stronger than Category 1. That last happened five days before Christmas 1984, when Lili did so well northeast of the Leeward Islands.

(Further beef up your forecast with our detailed, hour-by-hour breakdown for the next 8 days – only available on our Premium Pro experience.)

Satellite image of Hurricane Lili over the central Atlantic Ocean on Dec. 21, 1984.

(NOAA)

M​ost December storms were "fishy": As the map below shows, most of these December-forming storms remained far from land in the central Atlantic Ocean. B​ut not all of them were "fish storms".

B​oth Odette (2003) and Olga (2007) triggered deadly flooding and mudslides in Hispaniola. At the time, Odette was the first December tropical storm to develop in the Caribbean Sea. NOAA's ongoing found an unnamed 1887 storm formed east of Barbados, then tracked westward into the Caribbean Sea.

Tracks of the 13 storms and hurricanes that first became storms in December from 1887 through 2022. Black track sections correspond to when each system was either a remnant or disturbance before becoming a depression.

(Data: NOAA/NHC)

After first becoming a hurricane on New Year's Eve 1954, Alice swept into the northern Leeward Islands on Jan. 2, 1955, damaging homes and crops. Alice remains the only known Atlantic Basin hurricane to have spanned two calendar years as a hurricane.

T​here is no record of a December-forming storm reaching the mainland U.S.

Radar image from the U.S.S. Midway of Hurricane Alice northeast of the British Virgin Islands on Jan. 1, 1955.

(U.S. Navy via Scott Doering)

January, too: If you thought December sounded weird for development, consider the heart of winter.

A N​ational Hurricane Center post-analysis concluded a subtropical storm formed off the Northeast Seaboard in . It eventually slid into Nova Scotia, Canada, with little fanfare.

S​even years before that in 2016, became only the second Atlantic hurricane to form in January (the other was in ). Alex was the strongest January Atlantic hurricane on record, packing 85 mph peak winds before its weaker landfallin the Azores as a tropical storm.

T​wo other January storms formed in 1951 and 1978, generally north or northeast of the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico.

(For even more granular weather data tracking in your area, view your 15-minute details forecast in our Premium Pro experience.)

Infrared satellite loop showing the non-tropical low off the Southeast coast on Jan. 7, 2016, moving across the Atlantic before developing into Alex on Jan. 13.

Groundhog Day: Perhaps oddest of all was an off the Southeast Coast in 1952.

A wind gust of 68 mph was clocked in downtown Miami and .

NOAA's Re-analysis Project concluded it would have been called a subtropical storm if it happened today, given modern satellite imagery wasn't available in 1952. Regardless, it remains the only February Atlantic Basin tropical storm of record.

Track history of the February 1952 tropical storm. The dashed green line indicates the system's track as a tropical low. The orange line indicates the time during which it was briefly a tropical storm. The black dashed line up the Eastern seaboard indicates its track as a non-tropical low.

(NOAA/AOML/Hurricane Research Division)

H​ow can this happen: "Usually, storms that form after the season do so from non-tropical sources, including upper-level lows and cold fronts," Eric Blake, senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, told weather.com in 2017.

"Acommon scenario is when an upper-low cuts off and sits over warmer-than-normal water for a few days beneath a blocking pattern."

When that happens, clustering thunderstorms can turn what was originally a cold-core, non-tropical systeminto a or tropical storm.

While the official hurricane season captures almost all activity, these storms are proof that the other 3% can break the rules.

M​ORE ON WEATHER.COM

-​ 2023 Hurricane Season Recap

-​ Why Winter Starts For Meteorologists On December 1

-​ Winter Outlook

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. His lifelong love of meteorology began with a close encounter with a tornado as a child in Wisconsin. He studied physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then completed his Master's degree working with dual-polarization radar and lightning data at Colorado State University. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on X (formerly Twitter), Threads, Facebook and Bluesky.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, .