Hurricane Lee (2023)

Hurricane Lee

Lee at peak intensity to the east of the Leeward Islands on September 8
Meteorological history
Formed	September 5, 2023
Extratropical	September 16, 2023
Dissipated	September 18, 2023
Category 5 major hurricane
1-minute sustained (SSHWS/NWS)
Highest winds	165 mph (270 km/h)
Lowest pressure	926 mbar (hPa); 27.34 inHg
Overall effects
Fatalities	4
Damage	$50 million (2023 USD)
Areas affected	Bermuda, Northeastern United States, Eastern Canada
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Part of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season

Hurricane Lee was a long-lived and intense Cape Verde hurricane which impacted Bermuda, the Northeastern United States, and Eastern Canada in September 2023. The twelfth named storm, fourth hurricane, and third major hurricane of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season, Lee formed on September 5 from a tropical wave that had moved offshore from West Africa into the tropical Atlantic a few days earlier. A strong steering current caused the storm to track northwestward, far from the Northern Leeward Islands. Highly favorable conditions enabled Lee to rapidly intensify to a Category 5 hurricane on September 7, its winds increased by 85 mph (140 km/h) in 24 hours. This made it the third‑fastest rapid intensification on record in the Atlantic, only behind Hurricane Wilma in 2005 and Hurricane Felix in 2007. Just as quickly however, Lee's strength waned, and it fluctuated in intensity for several days on account of strong wind shear and multiple eyewall replacement cycles.

On September 13, the system rounded the southwest side of a large ridge of high pressure over the central Atlantic, turned, and accelerated northward. Lee soon entered into an environment of increasing wind shear and moved into increasingly cooler water, causing the system to slowly weaken as it passed near Bermuda and New England, and to undergo the transition into an extratropical cyclone. The cyclone then made landfalls in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and in Newfoundland and Labrador, before moving out into the far northern Atlantic on September 18, where it merged with another extratropical low.

Swells generated by Lee caused dangerous surf and rip currents along the entire Atlantic coast of the United States. Strong winds with hurricane‑force gusts caused extensive power outages in the U.S. state of Maine, and in the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Three storm-related fatalities have been confirmed: a 15-year-old boy drowned in Fernandina Beach, Florida; a 51-year-old man died in Searsport, Maine, when a tree fell onto the car he was in; and a 21-year-old man who was killed when the boat he was in was capsized and sunk by a large wave in Manasquan Inlet, New Jersey.