The records keep adding up this hurricane season.
With Beta making landfall in Texas last night, it is now the ninth named storm to make landfall in 2020.
This hurricane season now shares the record with 1916 – for the most landfalling named systems in the US in a single year.
This year has seen more US landfalls than the historic 2005 season, which had seven.
Here are storms that have made landfall in the US this year
The even more remarkable thing: We tied the record in September. There are still over two months of hurricane season.
“On average, it is close to a 50/50 chance whether or not we will see a landfalling named system in the US between now and November 30th,” CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller says. “But this is no average year.”
In the past three years, the US has seen at least one tropical cyclone make landfall in October and November.
If recent history is any guide, every year since 2016 has had at least one storm make US landfall during this time.
So, 2020 may go down in the record books as having the most US landfalls in a single year.
Nearly the entire US East Coast from Brownsville, Texas, to Portland, Maine, have experienced tropical storm-force winds this hurricane season. And only small portions of Florida, Georgia and Maine’s coastline have escaped winds of that intensity this year.
The good news, as of Tuesday morning, there is only a low chance of tropical formation over the next 5-days.
Other astonishing 2020 hurricane season records
You may have noticed that this last storm is named Beta. That isn’t a mistake. For only the second time in history, the National Hurricane Center has used up the entire list of names.
To name additional storms, the NHC will use the Greek alphabet. In 2005, they had to use six letters of the Greek alphabet for a record number of storms. If the NHC names five more storms, 2020 will go down in history as the most named storms ever in the Atlantic.
Already this year is far ahead of pace compared to the 2005 season. In 2005, Tropical Storm Alpha was named on October 22. In 2020, Alpha was named on September 18, nearly five weeks earlier than the 2005 storm of the same name.
Similarily, every named storm so far this season, except for three (Arthur, Bertha, and Dolly), set a record for the earliest to form.
Like, Alpha, Beta has formed a month earlier than the previous record set in 2005.
Ten of these storms have formed in September, breaking the old record of eight set in 2002, 2007 and 2010, Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University, tweets.
On average, there are three named storms in September and 12 across the entire season.
Just to remind you, Beta is the 23rd storm of the season.
Beta was 1 of three storms that formed on the same day. Only one other time has three named storms form on the same day, August 15th, 1893.