The strongest and most destructive hurricanes in history in the Atlantic Ocean: the rankings

THE’Hurricane Milton it is located in the Gulf of Mexico and heads towards Florida, where there are storm, tornado and flood warnings. Milton will make landfall on the west coast of Florida on the night of Wednesday 9 to Thursday 10 October 2024. It turned out to be a hurricane particularly violentwhich reached the twice category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, i.e. the maximum category foreseen by the official hurricane classification system. But how does it compare to the hurricanes that we have observed in the Atlantic Ocean over the decades and centuries? To answer we must first establish with respect to which parameter we can say that one hurricane is “worse” than another. Here we take into consideration the maximum measured wind speed (parameter on which the Saffir-Simpson scale is set) but also the so-called “depth” of a hurricane (i.e. its central pressure).

Spoilers: Milton appears in both chartsdominated by Hurricane Allen in 1980 and Hurricane Wilma in 2005, respectively.

Regarding the destructiveness of a hurricane, we separately considered the cost in terms of economic damage (and here Katrina dominates) and of human victims. Here are the rankings with the “top 10” of the most intense and destructive hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic, depending on the various parameters. As you may notice, some hurricanes appear in multiple charts, including Mitcha category 5 hurricane that hit Honduras in 1998 with winds of 280 km/h causing over 11,000 victims.

The classification according to the speed of the winds

Here is the ranking of the 10 most intense hurricanes in the Atlantic based on maximum speed of sustained winds over a period of 1 minute:

1. Allen (1980): peaks of 305 km/h;
2. “Labor Day” (1935): 295 km/h;
3. Gilbert (1988): 295 km/h;
4. Wilma (2005): 295 km/h;
5. Dorian (2019): 295 km/h;
6. Mitch (1998): 285 km/h;
7. Rita (2005): 285 km/h;
8. Irma (2005): 285 km/h;
9. Milton (2024): 285 km/h;
10. “Cuba” (1932): 280 km/h.

(Names in quotation marks indicate those assigned before the official assignment method still used today.)

We note that, apart from two cases in the 1930s, all of the most intense hurricanes in the Atlantic have occurred in the last 40 years or so. Milton is in the top 10 ex aequo with Irma, Rita and Mitch. It is also, after Dorian, the hurricane with the strongest winds since 2005, a year which had a particularly energetic hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean.

Classification according to pressure

The 10 “deepest” hurricanes ever observed in the Atlantic based on pressure minimum recorded are:

1. Wilma (2005): 882 hPa (or mbar);
2. Gilbert (1988): 888 hPa;
3. “Labor Day” (1935): 892 hPa;
4. Rita (2005): 895 hPa;
5. Milton (2024): 897 hPa;
6. Allen (1980): 899 hPa;
7. Camille (1969): 900 hPa;
8. Katrina (2005): 902 hPa;
9. Mitch (1998): 905 hPa;
10. Dean (2007): 905 hPa.

To be clear, in normal conditions at sea level the atmospheric pressure is around 1013 hPa: values ​​around 900 hPa are typically found around 1000 meters above sea level! Also in this ranking Milton is present in 5th place, and is the “deepest” hurricane ever observed in the last 19 years.

The classification according to economic damage

If we talk about damage to structures and infrastructures, these are the 10 hurricanes that have weighed the most on the coffers of the affected state:

1. Katrina (2005): $125 billion;
2. Harvey (2017): $125 billion;
3. Ian (2017): $113 billion;
4. Mary (2017): $96 billion;
5. Irma (2017): $77 billion.
6. Ida (2021): $75 billion;
7. Sandy (2012): $69 billion;
8. Helena (2024): $38.5 billion;
9. Andrew (1992): $27 billion.

It should be noted that the 2017 hurricane season was particularly disastrous from an economic point of view. Katrina and Harvey, which hit the New Orleans area and Texas respectively, were the two most “expensive” tropical cyclones ever, not just in the Atlantic.

Classification according to victims

Finally, let’s see the 10 hurricanes that caused the greatest number of victims in the Atlantic:

1. Major Caribbean hurricane (1780): between 22,000 and 27,000 victims;
2. Mitch (1998): at least 11,374 victims;
3. Fifi (1974): between 8200 and 10,000 victims;
4. “Galveston”: 8000 victims;
5. Flora (1963): 7193 victims;
6. “Pointe-à-Pitre” (1776): at least 6000 victims;
7. “Okeechobee” (1928): at least 4112 victims;
8. “Newfoundland” (1775): between 4000 and 4163 victims;
9. “Monterrey” (1909): 4000 victims;
10. “San Ciriaco” (1899): 3855 victims.

We note that many of the deadliest hurricanes occurred far back in time. The reason is simple: over time we have become increasingly better at predicting the paths of hurricanes, in order to act accordingly and with adequate warning.