Exactly eleven years ago today, Hurricane Wilma made landfall at Cape Romano in southern Florida as a major hurricane.  This is the last major hurricane to make landfall in the US.  The eleven years’ time period since the last major hurricane landfall is a record; the previous longest time period without a major storm hitting was 8 years from 1860 to 1869.  While the data for the total number of hurricanes going back to 1850 is not very accurate since many hurricanes never made landfall, we have much higher confidence in the number of landfalling hurricanes in the US because most of the coast was well populated back to 1850.

You can read more about Wilma at Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Wilma and watch some video from the storm at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JuQDsDJZ-I.  The fact that we were at a “W” storm in 2005 just tells you how active that season was.  And that was not the last storm of the season.  You can read about the rest of that year at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Atlantic_hurricane_season.

wilma_2005_track