The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season has come to an end and comes in as the third most active season on record behind the second most active season back in 2005 and last year's record breaking season.
We ended up with a total of 21 named storms, 7 which became hurricanes with 4 of those major hurricanes.
Tropical Storm Ana formed on May 22, just the beginning of another busy season as
new storms spun up rapidly with few breaks between each new storm.
Bill, Claudette, Danny and Elsa all hit in late June into July, with Claudette and Elsa battering the storm-weary Gulf Coast, which took the brunt of the record breaking 2020 season.
Tropical Storm Fred developed on Aug. 11 and kicked off a very busy couple of months. Between Aug. 11 and Oct. 5, there were 15 named systems and only two days on which there was not a named storm in the Atlantic basin.
The most memorable storm of the 2021 season was category 4 Hurricane Ida which smashed into the Louisiana coast with 150 mph winds on Aug. 29, which was the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastating landfall.
In the Coastal Bend, all eyes were on tropical storm Nicholas from September 12-16 as it moved northward along the western edge of the Gulf of Mexico, bringing rains to the Texas Gulf Coast as it slid along its track not far off the coastline. Shortly before it made landfall, Nicholas was upgraded to a hurricane as it produced wind gusts as high as 94 mph on Matagorda Bay. The storm made landfall shortly after midnight on Tuesday the 14th about 10 miles west-southwest of Sargent Beach.
The season came to a halt in mid-October as a shift in the weather pattern across the Atlantic hindered the formation of any new systems.