An Anniversary of Strangely-Moving Hurricanes

Nov 14, 2011; 12:11 PM ET

This week marks the anniversary of two late-season hurricanes that took bizarre paths. The first was Hurricane Gordon, who twisted and turned through the Atlantic basin between November 9th and 21st, 1994 [WikiPedia]. He made landfall in Nicaragua, then turned northeast, landfalling in Jamaica from a strange direction, then made a third landfall in Cuba.

He then paralleled the coast of Cuba, made landfall in the Florida Keys and Tampa Bay, then exited the east coast of Florida to threaten the Carolinas, before looping around and making a sixth landfall in Central Florida, where he had just exited! He then paralleled the Southeast U.S. Coast, just inland before finally dissipating in South Carolina. This is officially the craziest tropical storm track I’ve ever seen (and possibly also the most landfalls of any storm, though there appear to not be any records of that). While doing all the loop-t-loos, Gordon let loose more than an inch of rain from New Jersey down to Florida where he dumped 16 inches!

If you thought that was crazy (and I know you did) check out Hurricane Lenny’s track from 1999. Think the track isn’t wack? The storm was moving backwards (compared to normal storm movement in the Atlantic basin). As a result, he caused damage on sides of islands that are normally protected from storms.

So far this season (it ends in two weeks) the tracks of tropical storms through the Atlantic basin have been fairly consistent.