It was clear way back in mid-September, when the National Hurricane Center had already exhausted its regular list of names and turned to the Greek alphabet, that 2020 would be a hurricane season for the record books.
It definitely was that. The season, which formally ends every Nov. 30, produced a stunning 30 named storms — breaking the 2005 record of 28. It was only the second time forecasters resorted to the backup list of names and, as if to punctuate how wild a season it was, that first Greek-letter system, Tropical Storm Alpha, wound up hitting Portugal — the first recorded strike by a tropical system in that country’s history.
Though there was a lot of anxious monitoring of the storm-track cones, Florida’s only real brushes this year were Hurricane Sally, a Category 2 that struck the western Panhandle in September, and Tropical Storm Eta, whose zig-zagging path brought it over Central America, Cuba, South Florida and North Florida in the course of a week. Both storms brought destructive flooding to the Sunshine State, in some cases leaving neighborhoods in Miami-Dade and Broward counties underwater for days.
Read more at our news partner the Miami Herald.
