Like pretty much everything this year, the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane season was an abnormality not ever seen before by meteorologists and hurricane specialists.
As the official final day of hurricane season — Nov. 30 — arrives, forecasters have tallied 30 named storms, the most ever recorded; the next closest with 28 systems of tropical storm strength or greater was 2005.
Both 2005 and 2020 have seen the same number of systems form into a tropical depression or greater — 31 — but systems could still form past Nov. 30, like 2005's Tropical Storm Zeta that formed on Dec. 30. The NHC continues to monitor systems year-round, and even today, forecasters give a non-tropical pressure systems in the far eastern Atlantic a 40% chance of spinning up into either a depression or storm in the next two to five days.
