page_title: List of Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes
section_title: Landfalls
hierarchical_section_title: List of Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes / Landfalls
caption_attribution_description: English: Hurricane Michael beginning to make landfall on the Florida Panhandle on October 10, 2018, near the time of its peak intensity as a Category 5 hurricane.
context_page_description: A Category 5 Atlantic hurricane is a tropical cyclone that reaches Category 5 intensity on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale, within the Atlantic Ocean to the north of the equator. They are amongst the strongest tropical cyclones that can form on earth and have 1-minute sustained wind speeds of over 137 knots. The United States National Hurricane Center currently estimates that a total of 36 tropical cyclones between 1851 and 2020, have peaked as a category 5 hurricane.
context_section_description: With the exception of Hurricane Lorenzo, which did not make landfall but still brought hurricane-force winds to the Azores, all Atlantic Category 5 hurricanes have made landfall at some location as a hurricane, and all but four of those (Carol, Esther, Mitch and Isabel) made landfall at some location at major hurricane strength. Most Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic make landfall because of their proximity to land in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, where the usual synoptic weather patterns carry them towards land, as opposed to the westward, oceanic mean track of Eastern Pacific hurricanes. Seventeen of the storms made landfall at least once while at Category 5 intensity; 2007 and 2017 are the only years in which two storms made landfall at this intensity.
  Many of these systems made landfall shortly after weakening from a Category 5 hurricane. This weakening can be caused by dry air near land, shallower waters due to shelving, interaction with land, replacement of its eyewalls, or cooler waters near shore. In southern Florida, the return period for a Category 5 hurricane is roughly once every 50 years.
  The following table lists these hurricanes by landfall intensity. As Lorenzo did not make landfall, it is omitted.
caption: Hurricane Michael as it was making landfall as a Category 5 hurricane in 2018
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