1950 Atlantic hurricane season

1950 Atlantic hurricane season
Season summary map
Seasonal boundaries
First system formed	August 12, 1950
Last system dissipated	November 12, 1950
Strongest storm
Name	Dog
• Maximum winds	145 mph (230 km/h) (1-minute sustained)
• Lowest pressure	943 mbar (hPa; 27.85 inHg)
Seasonal statistics
Total depressions	16
Total storms	16
Hurricanes	11
Major hurricanes (Cat. 3+)	6
Total fatalities	93 total
Total damage	$43.39 million (1950 USD)
Related articles
1950 Pacific hurricane season 1950 Pacific typhoon season 1950 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
Atlantic hurricane seasons 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952

The 1950 Atlantic hurricane season was the first year in the Atlantic hurricane database (HURDAT) that storms were given names in the Atlantic basin. Names were taken from the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet, with the first named storm being designated "Able", the second "Baker", and so on. It was a very active season with sixteen tropical storms, with eleven of them developing into hurricanes. Six of these hurricanes were intense enough to be classified as major hurricanes—a denomination reserved for storms that attained sustained winds equivalent to a Category 3 or greater on the present-day Saffir–Simpson scale. One storm, the twelfth of the season, was unnamed and was originally excluded from the yearly summary, and three additional storms were discovered in re-analysis. The large quantity of strong storms during the year yielded, prior to modern reanalysis, what was the highest seasonal accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) of the 20th century in the Atlantic basin; 1950 held the seasonal ACE record until broken by the 1995 Atlantic hurricane season. However, later examination by researchers determined that several storms in the 1950 season were weaker than thought, leading to a lower ACE than assessed originally.^[1][2] This season also set the record for the most tropical storms, eight, in the month of October.

The tropical cyclones of the season produced a total of 88 fatalities and $38.5 million in property damage (1950 USD). The first officially named Atlantic hurricane was Hurricane Able, which formed on August 12, brushed the North Carolina coastline, and later moved across Atlantic Canada. The strongest hurricane of the season, Hurricane Dog, reached the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale and caused extensive damage to the Leeward Islands. Two major hurricanes affected Florida: Easy produced the highest 24-hour rainfall total recorded in the United States, while King struck downtown Miami as a Category 4 hurricane and caused $27.75 million (1950 USD) of damage. The two major landfalls made the 1945–1950 period the only five-year period to feature five major hurricane landfalls in the United States—a record that held until tied in 2000–2005.^[1][2] The last storm of the year, an unnamed tropical storm, dissipated on November 12.