If Hurricanes Don’t Make U.S. Landfall, Did They Happen?

Tropical Storm Imelda and Hurricane Humberto off the U.S. coast on September 28, 2025.

NASA

The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season is coming to a close. To date, the season has produced 13 named storms and three Category 5 hurricanes. Yet, I have noticed narratives in some popular and social media forums saying it was a “quiet” hurricane season. Meteorologically speaking, it was actually normal to slightly above normal and consistent with predictions issued by NOAA at the beginning of the season. I pose the question, “If hurricanes don’t make U.S. landfall, did they happen at all?”

Obviously, the hurricanes happened, but this is a play on the old philosophical question asked by George Berkely, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Berkely, who was a philosopher and Anglican Bishop during the 1600s, was toying with the concept of perception. What factors lead to the false narrative that the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season was quiet?

A U.S. Mainland Bias

I am writing this piece from the U.S. and am reacting primarily to comments from people in this country. It is clear to me that many people in this country associate “active season” with whether the tropical storms or hurricanes made landfall in the continental U.S. Only Tropical Storm Chantal made a direct U.S. landfall in the mainland U.S. this season. According to NOAA, Tropical Storm Chantal made landfall on July 6 Litchfield Beach, South Carolina. It formed off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida on July 4. The remnants of Barry also played a role in the devastating Texas flooding earlier this year.

Hurricane Erin was the first hurricane of the season. According to the NASA Earth Observatory website, “Hurricane Erin rapidly intensified over the ocean as it approached the Caribbean and the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. Although it did not make landfall, the powerful storm system sent heavy rain and strong winds to coastal areas of Puerto Rico, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Bahamas, and the U.S. Atlantic coast.” Thousands lost power in Puerto Rico, which is a U.S. territory, but to many people here, the “mainland U.S. bias” may cause them to overlook impacts on fellow U.S. citizens there. Even more sadly, there are some people that still don’t know they are citizens, but that is a commentary for another day.

In September, I discussed the fascinating interactions between Humberto and Imelda. The Fujiwhara effect is an interaction between hurricanes in close proximity to each other. I wrote, “There is still some possibility of Humberto and the next storm, which will be named Imelda, interacting with each other. That “hurricane dance” is called the Fujiwhara effect. While it can be fascinating, it can also make track forecasting more challenging…. Humberto could drag “Imelda” out to sea.” That’s exactly what happened and the U.S. mainland was spared.

The Psychology Of Me

Though I am not a psychologist, I often point out various biases that shape perceptions on weather risk and communication. For example, optimism or recency bias informs how some people make decisions about whether to evacuate from a hurricane. Motivated reasoning might shape whether someone decides to drive through a flooded roadway. Negativity bias causes people to focus on the occasional bad forecast and overlook the far more numerous good ones.

Is there a psychological term that frames the perception that if hurricanes are not making landfall in the U.S., the season is quiet? I keep coming back to the famous saying, “All politics is local.” Though often credited to former House Speaker Tip O’Neill, some historians date it back to Byron Price in 1932. In a nutshell, it suggests that most people care about things that affect them locally.

The “Did it affect me?” mentality rears its head often in meteorology. If it doesn’t rain at a person’s house, they may assume 30% chance was wrong. However, it likely rained somewhere else in the forecast area. Many people will complain about a school district taking preemptive action for a potential tornadic storm. They might utter, “What was all of the fuss, my house is still standing?” even as another part of the same county might have been ravaged by a twister.

In the broader sense, “me” is the United States when people frame the 2025 hurricane season as quiet even though 13 storms formed. Hurricane Melissa (2025) ravaged Jamaica and other islands and will go down as one of the strongest hurricanes to make landfall in the Atlantic basin. From my perspective, it only takes one bad storm to shape a season. We actually had 13 of them this year. It almost makes me wonder if a new way of framing what an active season means is needed. While it is hard for people to focus on hurricanes that turn out to sea, even those storms are not completely harmless “fish storms.” Small islands, shipping, and supply chains can be affected.

For many people, only impacts to them matter. For me, sympathy matters. When I see a storm like Hurricane Melissa affect people many miles away, it matters, and there was nothing quiet about it. As broadcast meteorologist Bryan Norcross noted, ” It’s actually quite common to get through a season without a hurricane landfall. It just hasn’t happened in the last 10 years.” He also mentioned that over the past 75 years, 21% of the seasons did not have a U.S. landfall. Norcross rose to fame for his coverage of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The Atlantic hurricane season was significantly below average that year with only 10 named storms. One of those storms was Andrew. It only took one to change lives and the landscape of south Florida.