Effects of Hurricane Irma in Florida
Irma was the first major hurricane to strike the state since Wilma in 2005 and the first Category 4 hurricane to make landfall in Florida since Charley in 2004. The storm made landfall in Florida on the same date as Hurricane Donna, the last Category 4 hurricane to strike the Florida Keys. Irma was only the second hurricane to hit Florida since Wilma, the other being Hermine in 2016. Due to few very intense hurricanes since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, there was concern that many Floridians never experienced or did not recall experiencing a hurricane as strong as Irma was projected to be at landfall, with significant growth in population and assets during the previous 25 years.
List of off-season Atlantic hurricanes
Of the off-season storms that struck land, portions of the Caribbean were affected most. Hurricane Alice was the only of the cyclones to strike land as a hurricane, doing so to islands in the northern Lesser Antilles; it caused locally heavy rainfall and moderate damage. No hurricanes have ever made landfall in the United States during December, although at one point a storm in 1925 was believed to have done this. One century earlier, a hurricane formed in the western Caribbean and struck Florida on or before June 3, which was the earliest date for a United States hurricane landfall. However, there is an unofficial hurricane in 1863 that struck the Florida panhandle, killing 110 people. The deadliest official off-season storm was a tropical storm in May 1948, which killed 80 people in the Dominican Republic.