Caribbean Hurricane Risk by Island

How This Comparison Measures Historical Exposure

What counts—and what does not

“Strike” has a specific National Hurricane Center definition. An NHC-defined strike occurs when an island or other location enters an asymmetric strike circle 125 nautical miles (144 mi; 232 km) in diameter, centered 12.5 nautical miles to the right of the hurricane center along its direction of motion. That gives a nominal reach of 75 nautical miles on the right side and 50 nautical miles on the left.

• Landfall: the cyclone’s surface center crosses a coastline. Damaging winds can reach land even when the center does not.
• NHC-defined strike: the location intersects the official asymmetric strike circle while the system is a hurricane.
• Nearby passage: the center passes within a declared distance. The table below uses 100 km (62 mi).
• Direct hit: a separate NHC term tied to the radius of maximum wind; it is not interchangeable with landfall or strike.
• Actual impacts: observed wind, rain, surge, flooding, landslides or disruption. Track geometry alone does not measure them.

Because this analysis uses a fixed 100-km threshold rather than the NHC’s asymmetric circle, every data label says hurricane-center passage within 100 km (62 mi), never “strike,” “direct hit” or “landfall.”

Data window and calculation

The comparison uses the latest published Atlantic HURDAT2 best-track file available on September 4, 2026, containing completed-season records through 2025. The provisional 2026 season was excluded because it was not final in HURDAT2 on the analysis date. NCEI’s IBTrACS service uses 1980 as one modern-era subset, although routine satellite monitoring began earlier; here, 1980 is a conservative comparison cutoff that reduces—but does not eliminate—observing-system differences.

For each storm, HURDAT2 best-track positions—including six-hourly synoptic fixes and additional special entries—were interpolated geodesically on WGS84 at intervals no greater than 5 km (3.1 mi). A segment was eligible where interpolated wind reached at least 64 knots and at least one adjoining fix had HU status; a non-HU endpoint itself was excluded. Distance was then measured to GSHHG 2.3.7 full-resolution land polygons in a unit-centered azimuthal-equidistant projection. A storm counts once per analysis unit if its eligible center track comes within 100 km. A locally major encounter requires at least 96 knots while inside that zone, not the highest category the storm reached elsewhere. The month is the month of closest qualifying approach.

The relative descriptions are bins across the 39 displayed units: lower recorded exposure for 0–4 passages, variable or transition-zone exposure for 5–10, recurrent exposure for 11–12 and higher recorded track density above 12. These labels are comparative history, not a safest-to-most-dangerous ranking.

The wider 1851–2025 file represents known recorded historical tracks, not a complete census of every cyclone. Earlier Atlantic records are less complete, and both positions and intensities carry greater uncertainty. They are not mixed into the modern-period table.

Download the data: Caribbean hurricane-center passages by island, 1980–2025 (CSV). The file contains the 39 comparison units, passage and locally major counts, latest qualifying event, exposure grouping and monthly totals.

Island-by-Island Comparison, 1980–2025

The table compares the same track threshold across every unit. “Selected official center crossing” lists examples checked against the five linked NHC tropical cyclone reports; it is deliberately not a complete crossing or landfall inventory, and the center was not necessarily at hurricane strength at the crossing instant. Raw counts also favor large islands and dispersed archipelagos because their geometry gives a storm more opportunities to approach some part of the unit.

Reading the table: A passage is counted once per storm and analysis unit when the hurricane-strength center track came within 100 km (62 mi) of the stated land geometry. “Locally major” means the storm reached at least 96 kt while inside that 100-km zone. This is not an NHC strike, landfall count, observed wind footprint, impact total, trip forecast or complete safety ranking. The selected crossing column is deliberately non-exhaustive; an em dash means no example from the five linked reports is displayed, not that no center crossing occurred. A crossing example belongs to a qualifying 100-km encounter but was not necessarily at hurricane strength at the instant of crossing. Cuba’s three rows are longitude slices, so a track can traverse more than one slice without making a separate coastal landfall in each.

Which Caribbean Islands Have Lower Historical Hurricane Exposure?

The calculated lower-exposure group

Trinidad recorded no qualifying 100-km hurricane-center passage in this 46-season window. Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao each recorded one: Hurricane Felix in 2007. They therefore sit at the low end of this particular track measure, but none is hurricane-proof and a passage outside 100 km can still cause disruption.

Tobago must not inherit Trinidad’s result. Tobago recorded three passages, two locally at major-hurricane intensity, including Beryl in July 2024. Grenada’s main island also recorded three; Carriacou and Petite Martinique each recorded four. San Andrés recorded four and Providencia three in the southwestern Caribbean.

Barbados, Grenada, Tobago and the southern Grenadines are better understood as a transition zone than as a protected area. Hurricane Ivan severely affected Grenada in 2004, while the center of Category 4 Hurricane Beryl crossed Carriacou in 2024. Barbados recorded five passages in the table—below many northern islands, but not comparable to a guarantee of safety.

The same separation matters within Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Saint Vincent’s main island recorded four passages; the sampled northern and central Grenadines recorded six, and the sampled southern Grenadines recorded five. A national label would hide that internal geography.

Which Islands Lie in More Recurrent Hurricane Corridors?

The denser modern-period corridors in this analysis extend across parts of the northern Lesser Antilles, the Virgin Islands, the Greater Antilles, The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. The British Virgin Islands recorded 15 qualifying passages and the U.S. Virgin Islands 13. Guadeloupe, Antigua, Barbuda, Saint Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla and Saint Martin/Sint Maarten recorded 11 or 12 each, while nearby Montserrat recorded 10.

Puerto Rico recorded 12 and the whole island of Hispaniola—labeled for both Haiti and the Dominican Republic—recorded 17. Jamaica recorded 12. Grand Cayman recorded 10 and the Cayman Sister Islands seven, illustrating why the Jamaica–Cayman corridor should not be treated as one uniform zone.

Cuba’s long coastline creates a strong size effect and masks regional variation. Splitting the main island produces 23 passages in western Cuba, 13 in central Cuba and 11 in eastern Cuba. These are overlapping storm opportunities across separate longitude bands, not three independent country-level risk scores.

The Bahamas is even more dispersed, so the table uses northwest, central and southeast island groups, with 15, 14 and 13 passages respectively. The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos lie in the Atlantic rather than the Caribbean Sea, but are included because travelers commonly compare them with Caribbean destinations. Bermuda is not part of the Caribbean and is excluded.

These counts describe where hurricane-strength centers have repeatedly passed near land. They do not show deaths, losses, building quality, rainfall exposure or recovery capacity, and they should not be read as a league table of danger.

Why Exposure Differs Across the Caribbean

No official line divides a hurricane-prone north from a safe south. The “hurricane belt” is an informal geographic shortcut, and its supposed southern edge is not a protected boundary.

• Latitude: the Coriolis effect is weaker close to the equator, making organized tropical cyclones less likely to form or maintain the same circulation there. This helps explain lower exposure around Trinidad and the ABC islands, but it does not make those islands immune.
• Common track direction: tropical systems often move west or west-northwest across the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean under the influence of the subtropical ridge.
• African easterly waves: many long-track Atlantic hurricanes originate from disturbances moving westward from Africa, putting the Lesser Antilles near an early gateway into the Caribbean.
• Seasonal migration: favored formation areas change through the season. Early and late activity has a stronger western Caribbean component, while the tropical Atlantic becomes much more active later in summer.
• Recurvature: weaknesses in the subtropical ridge can turn storms northward near the northern Caribbean, contributing to dense but highly variable corridors around the Greater Antilles, Virgin Islands, Bahamas and Turks and Caicos.

Steering patterns change from storm to storm and year to year. A lower historical total therefore cannot tell a traveler where a future storm will form or turn.

Caribbean Hurricane Season by Month

The month-by-month climatology

The official Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30. NOAA’s climatological curve peaks on September 10, and most basin activity occurs from mid-August through mid-October. In a GeographyPin calculation from final HURDAT2 synoptic fixes for 1980–2024, August through October accounted for 89.2% of recorded Atlantic hurricane days and 92.6% of major-hurricane days. Those figures describe the basin and historical period; they are not island probabilities.

Island-by-month heatmap

Each cell shows the number of qualifying storms assigned to the month of closest approach, counted once per unit. The printed number is the actual count; color is only a visual aid. Zero or one event in a small sample must not be interpreted as a guaranteed safe month.

Each storm is assigned once per analysis unit to the month of its closest hurricane-strength approach. A zero is an observed zero under this method and period, not a guarantee of zero future risk. Early records outside this 1980–2025 comparison are not represented here.

Direct Strike vs. Travel Disruption

A cyclone does not need to make landfall, meet the NHC strike definition or enter the 100-km analysis zone to disrupt a trip. A distant storm can send large swell toward beaches and ports, feed heavy rain into another island, close airports, alter cruise itineraries, interrupt ferries or delay supplies.

Hazard is not the same as vulnerability

Track exposure is only one part of physical hazard, and hazard is only one part of risk. Consequences also depend on storm size, forward speed, rainfall, terrain, elevation, coastal exposure and the direction of approach. Vulnerability depends on construction, infrastructure, warning systems, access to shelter and the capacity to recover.

The Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale measures maximum sustained wind only. It does not measure rainfall flooding, storm surge or tornado risk. A lower-category or nearby hurricane can therefore produce severe impacts that this table’s locally measured category does not capture.

How to Use the History for a Trip

Practical planning checklist

January through April are the lowest-risk months only in the narrow sense of Atlantic tropical-cyclone climatology. That does not guarantee sunshine, dry weather, calm seas, open airports or uninterrupted ferry service. The difference is the same one explained in weather vs. climate: a long-run pattern cannot predict the conditions on a specific date.

• Check the National Hurricane Center as departure approaches.
• Follow the destination’s national meteorological service and emergency-management agency.
• Review airline, hotel and ferry cancellation or rebooking policies.
• Read travel-insurance exclusions and named-storm provisions before purchase; do not assume every disruption is covered.
• Keep dates, routes or bookings flexible during the June–November season.

Seasonal outlooks estimate basin-wide activity—such as the likely number of named storms, hurricanes or major hurricanes. They cannot forecast which island will be struck months in advance; useful track and impact forecasts emerge on much shorter lead times once a storm exists.

If timing and price both matter, the most cost-effective Caribbean islands comparison can help with the budget side of the decision. Treat any shoulder-season savings separately from hurricane exposure and cancellation flexibility.

Climate Change and Historical Comparisons

NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory concludes that warming is projected to increase tropical-cyclone rainfall rates and average intensity, while changes in total storm frequency remain less certain. There is also less confidence in precise regional track changes. That evidence does not establish that every Caribbean island’s strike frequency is already increasing.

Historical comparisons remain useful for describing where storms have traveled, but they are not fixed probabilities for a warmer future. The prudent use is to combine the record with current forecasts, local vulnerability and flexible planning—not to turn a 1980–2025 ordering into a permanent map of safety. GeographyPin’s overview of climate change and extreme weather provides broader context.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Did We Learn Today?

Caribbean hurricane exposure is a gradient rather than a protected zone: the ABC islands and Trinidad have lower modern-period center-track totals, while several northern corridors record recurrent approaches. The result depends on a declared track distance, local storm intensity and transparent island boundaries; it is not a landfall count, an impact score or a forecast. January through April minimize tropical-cyclone climatology, but current official information and flexible plans remain essential.

Sources & Data Notes

Analysis run September 4, 2026; source links rechecked September 5, 2026. Track file: hurdat2-1851-2025-02272026.txt, SHA-256 1b9b0c7beed5b4505838658b1d30e159fc84330c60891a58cfcf43ae55c37202. A SHA-256 checksum identifies the exact file version used. Filters: completed Atlantic seasons 1980–2025, hurricane strength at local encounter, one count per storm and unit, geodesic interpolation no greater than 5 km, a 100-km land buffer, a 96-kt locally major threshold and the month of closest approach. The 89.2% and 92.6% seasonal shares use 00, 06, 12 and 18 UTC HURDAT2 fixes through 2024, with four qualifying fixes treated as one hurricane day; these are GeographyPin calculations, not NOAA-published percentages. Coastlines: GSHHG/GSHHS 2.3.7 full-resolution level-1 land polygons, distribution SHA-256 8dbbe7e071e77e9e75f2d639239099ebca8d5c16d6a07df8169729d49f15cf41. Companion CSV: caribbean-hurricane-passages-1980-2025.csv, SHA-256 69bd7bc360c4c5e6230c9467d1366f132c8cc31d5b1c66ec79af404ebc178589. The grouping-note column defines each unit: paired islands are separated where feasible; Saint Martin/Sint Maarten is one physical island; Hispaniola is one physical island labeled for Haiti and the Dominican Republic; Cuba is split at 81°W and 77°W; The Bahamas is split into three named groups; listed multi-island units use the specified polygons; and the Turks and Caicos unit includes GSHHG level-1 polygons with representative points inside 72.55°W–70.9°W and 21.1°N–22.1°N. Twelve encounters fall between 95 and 100 km, underscoring that track uncertainty exceeds apparent computational precision. The center-crossing column contains selected examples checked against the five linked NHC reports, not a complete landfall inventory; a dash does not mean that no crossing has ever occurred. HURDAT2 can be revised through reanalysis. This analysis is scheduled for recalculation after each completed Atlantic season is incorporated and for review before June 1 each year.

• National Hurricane Center: Atlantic HURDAT2, 1851–2025
• National Hurricane Center: HURDAT2 Atlantic format documentation
• National Hurricane Center: Tropical Cyclone Climatology
• NOAA/AOML Hurricane FAQ
• National Hurricane Center glossary and National Weather Service strike definition
• NOAA/NCEI: International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship
• NOAA/NCEI: GSHHG shoreline and coastline databases and the official GSHHG 2.3.7 release page for the shapefile distribution used
• National Hurricane Center: Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale
• NOAA Climate Prediction Center: Atlantic Hurricane Outlook
• NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory: Global Warming and Hurricanes
• Selected center crossings checked against NHC tropical cyclone reports for Irma (2017), Maria (2017), Fiona (2022), Beryl (2024) and Melissa (2025).