ORLANDO, Fla. — Severe Weather Awareness Week in Florida is officially underway.

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The week is observed each year by the National Weather Service and Florida Division of Emergency Management to increase awareness and preparedness for severe weather and related hazards.

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Each day focuses on a different weather event Florida experiences. Thursday is hurricanes and flooding.

Read 9 things to know below:

• Florida gets more hurricanes overall than any other state, and all of Florida’s counties have experienced a hurricane at one time or another since record-keeping began in 1850.
• Hurricane season begins June 1, but having weak systems form before then is not that uncommon.  Also, early-season tropical systems like to form near Florida over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Bahamas.
• Hurricanes are classified from Category 1 to 5 with winds ranging from a minimum of 74mph (Cat 1) to 157mph+ (Cat 5).  According to NOAA, a Cat 5 hurricane can cause up to 250 times the damage of a Cat 1 storm of the same size.

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• Of the 5 most costly hurricanes to hit Florida, 3 of them (Irma 2017, Michael 2018, and Ian 2022) have occurred in the past 5 years with Ian likely the costliest Florida storm ever.
• El Nino and La Nina cycles in the Pacific can influence our Atlantic hurricane seasons.  In general, El Nino cycles bring fewer storms with La Nina bringing more.
• There have been two times that we’ve run out of names for tropical systems and had to resort to the Greek alphabet to fill the void.  After 2020′s record 30-named systems, and the ‘retiring’ of Greek letters ‘Eta’ and ‘Iota’, the Greek alphabet will no longer be used.  A backup list of regular names will be used instead.

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• Hurricanes and flooding often go hand in hand.  Hurricane Ian dropped over 20 inches of rain in central Florida in 2022 resulting in weeks of flooding and extensive clean-up.  NOAA reports that flooding is also the #2 cause of weather related fatalities around the U.S. second only to heat.
• When you think of hurricanes you probably think of high winds.  But according to NOAA, it’s the water that’s responsible for 90% of fatalities and half of those are due to coastal storm surges.  Storm surge is due to rising water along coast generated by strong winds from a tropical system nearby.
• The average Atlantic hurricane season consists of 14 named storms, 7 becoming hurricanes, and 3 becoming major hurricanes (Cat 3+).  Most of this activity occurs from mid-August to mid-October.

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