At a Glance

Much of the U.S. coast has been under a tropical storm and/or hurricane warning this year.Eta has filled in a part of Florida's coast where warnings had not yet been issued.A record 12 named storms have made landfall in the U.S. this season.

Nearly the entire United States coastline from the Gulf of Mexico to the Eastern Seaboard has been under a tropical storm or hurricane warning at some point during the 2020 hurricane season.

Eta's tropical storm warning along Florida's western Gulf Coast filled in a stretch of coastline where no warnings had previously been issued. A small area near Florida's Big Bend is the only location bordering the Atlantic Basin where no tropical storm and/or hurricane warning has been issued this season.

Track of landfalling named storms in the U.S. in 2020. The track through South Florida other than Eta in the Keys was Tropical Depression Nineteen, which eventually became Sally in the Gulf of Mexico.

About 96.5% of U.S. coastline miles (3,486 of 3,613 miles) along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico have been , according to a tweet from James Franklin, a retired chief for the Hurricane Specialist Unit of the National Hurricane Center.

Franklin said in records dating to 1987 that of the U.S. coast covered by a tropical storm or hurricane warnings.

This does not mean all of these areas have experienced tropical storm or hurricane conditions this year.

For example, the Atlantic coast of Florida was under hurricane warnings for Isaias in early August, but it only brushed the coast with modest wind and rain while its center remained safely offshore.

Florida finally recorded its first official landfall – the location in which the center of a tropical storm or hurricane crosses land – of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season that otherwise shattered a record for U.S. named storm landfalls.

Tropical Storm Eta made landfall in the Florida Keys late Sunday night with winds estimated at 65 mph. It's expected to make a second landfall along Florida's western Gulf Coast on Thursday.

Eta became the 12th named storm to make landfall in the mainland U.S. in 2020. That's three more than the previous record for the most U.S. landfalls in a season set in 1916.

It took until Nov. 8, typically the hurricane season's last month, for one of those storms to make a landfall in the Sunshine State.

There is an asterisk to that, however.

hammered the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama in mid-September with up to 30 inches of rain, wind gusts up to 121 mph and storm surge flooding.

Technically speaking, however, Sally's landfall occurred just across the border near Gulf Shores, Alabama.

Sally's Landfall

It also moved across South Florida as Tropical Depression Nineteen. It didn't become Sally until it moved offshore just south of Naples, Florida.

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