Hurricane season doesn’t guarantee us any holidays, but the 4th of July is one of those rare exceptions when the coast is clear in most years.
In recordkeeping that extends back to pre-Civil War days, we’ve only documented two tropical storms and one hurricane landfall on the 4th of July in the U.S. Two of those storms happened more than a century ago.
The only Independence Day hurricane strike on record was Hurricane Arthur back in 2014, which scraped quickly over North Carolina’s Outer Banks as a Category 2 hurricane during the pre-dawn hours of July 4th. Although Arthur technically made landfall at 11:15 PM local on July 3rd just west of Cape Lookout, the eye of the hurricane was still over Pamlico Sound and lashing the North Carolina coastline after midnight on July 4th.
Even so, Arthur was accelerating away from North Carolina by daybreak on July 4th, 2014, with peeks of sunshine even reaching the sands of North Carolina’s battered beaches later that morning.
Why so few U.S. landfalls on the 4th?
The Independence Day holiday falls in the early part of the hurricane season when hurricanes and tropical storms are generally less common. Roughly 94 percent of named storms, 97 percent of hurricanes, and 99.5 percent of all major (Category 3 or stronger) hurricanes form after July 4th. Only about one in eight named storms to hit the U.S. happens before July 5.
But July 4th has something more working in its favor. As we’ve written about extensively in this newsletter over the years, storms begin forming farther away from the U.S. in July, which means we have fewer “homegrown” or “homebrewed” systems.
Because of this, we actually see a dip in the number of U.S. storms in July, with July falling second only to November for the lowest number of U.S. named storm landfalls of any month of the 6-month hurricane season.
So while we can never guarantee a hurricane-free holiday from June through November, July 4th is probably the closest you’ll get before Thanksgiving.
All about the extreme heat this July 4th
Even in the years when storms don’t strike on July 4th, we can see issues from the tropics, such as the tropical-laden air that contributed to the horrific central Texas floods last year and killed nearly 140 people.
This Independence Day, however, it won’t be flooding but excessive heat that poses the biggest threat weatherwise. A dangerous heatwave gripping the central and eastern U.S. will pose major health-related issues for those underneath the massive heat dome in the days ahead.
The National Weather Service has a wide swath of the eastern U.S. under extreme heat risk for the holiday weekend, with dozens of daily temperature records threatened, as feels-like temperatures touch 115 degrees in parts of the mid-Atlantic and northeast.
For those affected by the heatwave, remember to limit your time outdoors, stay hydrated, and ensure you have easy access to A/C or cooling centers.
The tropics should remain quiet for at least the first few weeks of July.
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