BOSTON — Erin became a hurricane at 11 AM (EDT) on Friday but rapidly strengthened to a category five storm this Saturday! Any system this powerful bears watching, but current forecasts call for a miss across the Caribbean, U.S., and Bermuda. The ocean is vast, but are we lucky that this storm will completely miss? Let’s take a look at what history has to say...
To start, we took the exact point where Erin became a hurricane on Friday. From there, we identified every storm in the past century that was also a hurricane within 50 miles of this point.
Of the seventeen storms we identified, sixteen of them strengthened to major hurricane status (Cat 3+), twelve of them becoming category four or stronger. This means Erin is NOT an outlier in the sense of its strength, although the speed at which it has intensified is another story.
We also noted how many of these storms made landfall at hurricane strength. This includes any major landmass or island. We found that eight of them (47%) met this criterion. So, while Erin is not necessarily an outlier, we are somewhat fortunate that this storm remains on a track purely out-to-sea!
Just in case you were curious, NONE made landfall in New England either!
©2025 Cox Media Group
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/7QOJU3BNCJERBNKJC5LWTBYFLU.png)
