With just two weeks left in the 2025 hurricane season, it appears the East Coast, and especially the Southeast, escaped the impact of a landfalling hurricane for the first time in a decade. Alex DaSilva, Lead Hurricane Expert with AccuWeather, says steering mechanisms like the Bermuda High played a role in sparing the Continental US.
“What we saw this year was this Bermuda High was a little bit further to the east than what we typically see. So in a typical year, maybe it’s a little bit further to the west, but this year it was a little further to the east, and overall it was a little bit on the weaker side. So as a result, most of the storms that formed this season went around the periphery of that Bermuda High and went out to sea.”
DaSilva says Chantal made landfall as a tropical storm and Hurricane Erin brought rain in August even without making landfall.
“They were close enough to the United States, such as Erin, for example, which still did bring direct impacts to the United States. So Chantal was the only storm that actually made direct landfall to the United States, but we had other storms this year that still came close enough, like Erin for example, which still brought tropical storm force wind gusts and rain and coastal flooding to the United States despite not making direct landfall.”
The last year a hurricane did not make direct landfall to the U.S. was 2015.