Hurricanes Near US Cities by Decade, 1850s to 2020s

Among complete decades, the most systems came near US cities in the 1950s (56) and the fewest in the 1860s (21). The most major hurricanes at their closest pass to a city came in the 1990s (11). The average complete decade before 1900 has 36.0 systems and 22.0 hurricanes at the closest pass; the average since 1970 has 43.0 systems and 16.8 hurricanes. The 2020s so far, through 2025, have 41 systems and 20 hurricanes at the closest pass.

Before 1900, 61% of the systems in the record were hurricanes when they came closest to a city; since 1970 the share is 39%. That is what an incomplete early record would look like: a weak tropical storm that stayed offshore in 1870 had little chance of being recorded, while a hurricane that struck the coast did.

The number of different cities a decade's storms reached swings more than the number of storms, because one storm that tracks inland across several states can reach hundreds of cities. The widest reach among complete decades is the 1900s, when storms came within 75 miles of 8,209 cities; the narrowest is the 1850s, with 3,692. The 2020s have reached 6,022 cities so far, against 5,617 in the whole of the 2010s.

Cities on this site are today's cities, placed where their residents live now. A storm in 1880 that passed a place that was then farmland still counts for the city that stands there, which keeps the count comparable across decades as a measure of where storms went, though not of how many people they affected.

By the number of cities each one reached, the widest-reaching storms are listed below. A storm that crossed the country as a tropical storm or a depression can reach more cities than a stronger one that struck a single stretch of coast, so this is a measure of reach, not of strength.

Before aircraft reconnaissance began in the 1940s and weather satellites in the 1960s, a storm was recorded only if a ship, an island or a coastal station observed it. The National Hurricane Center's HURDAT2 files are re-analysed decade by decade, and each revision can add storms, remove them or change their strength. US population and coastline settlement also changed over the period, which changes how likely a passing storm was to be noticed and reported.

For those reasons the counts here describe the record as it stands, not a trend. The hurricane index lists every storm by decade, and the methodology explains how a storm is matched to a city.