Hurricane Kristy became the latest Category 5 storm

Hurricane Kristy was the latest in a series of Category 5 storms in recent years in both the Eastern Pacific and the Atlantic.

Short cat. 5: After flirting with that elite status the previous day, Kristy strengthened into a Category 5 hurricane over the eastern Pacific on Thursday afternoon, October 24, while centered nearly 1,600 miles southwest of Los Cabos, Mexico.

There was no Hurricane Hunter reconnaissance mission to measure peak wind speeds in Kristy because the hurricane posed no threat to landfall. So the National Hurricane Center used techniques based on Kristy's appearance in satellite images to upgrade it to a cat. 5.

However, I didn't last long. Six hours later, the NHC estimated that winds had dropped to cat. 4 intensity.

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Which cat? 5 means: Wind is just one of many impacts of hurricanes. However, hurricanes have historically been rated based on their maximum sustained winds using the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale.

Category 5 hurricanes have maximum sustained winds of 157 miles per hour or more and can cause catastrophic wind damage.

Not the only one this year: Kristy wasn't the only cat. 5 hurricanes this year or this month.

Less than three weeks ago, Hurricane Milton rapidly intensified to cat. 5 over the southern Gulf of Mexico on October 7th, then flown back to Cat. 5 after the eyewall was replaced. The next day again 5.

On July 1, Hurricane Beryl became the first Atlantic basin disaster. 5 on record and strongest Atlantic hurricane in July by wind speed after devastating the southern Windward Islands.

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Also last year three: The 2023 hurricane season caused three Cat. Also 5 hurricanes.

J​ova was briefly a cat. 5 on September 6-7 as it moved over 500 miles from Mexico's Baja Peninsula. Shortly after, Hurricane Lee made this cat. 5 jump as it turned 700 miles east of the Leeward Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.

We weren't so lucky with the third cat. 5.

Hurricane Otis unexpectedly created a tropical storm cat. Category 5 hurricane before making catastrophic landfall in Acapulco, Mexico on October 5, 2023.

So that's six cats. In total, there have been five hurricanes in the Eastern Pacific and Atlantic in the last two hurricane seasons.

How often does this happen: As our previous deep dive showed, there were 42 Atlantic pelvis cats. 5 hurricanes documented in the last 100 years since 1924, including Lee, Beryl and Milton from the last two seasons.

In reliable records since the early 1970s, including Jova in 2023 and Kristy in 2024, 14 hurricanes have reached the category. 5 East Pacific Basin Intensity – defined as east of 140 degrees longitude.

This is the average of such a cat. 5 every 2 to 3 years in the Atlantic basin and every 3 to 4 years in the eastern Pacific basin.

But there were active and quieter sections.

There were 10 Cat 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic basin from 2016 to 2024 and eight Cat category hurricanes. 5s from 2003 to 2007. On the other hand, in the Atlantic there was a nine-year gap between Felix in 2007 and Matthew in 2016.

How many Cat. 5 landings: Otis was the only cat. 5 record landings somewhere in the Eastern Pacific Basin. Several other E. Pacific Cat. Five hurricanes, including the strongest hurricane ever in the Western Hemisphere, Patricia in 2015, made landfall in Mexico, but not Cat. 5 intensity.

Of the 42 Atlantic Cat. 5 hurricanes, 19 made a disaster. 5 Landing somewhere in the pool.

Four of them did so on the continental United States: Michael in the Florida Panhandle (2018), Andrew in South Florida (1992), Camille on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (1969), and the 1935 Labor Day hurricane in the Florida Keys.

Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula (Janet 1955, Gilbert 1988 and Dean 2007) and the Bahamas (1932, 1933 and Dorian 2019) each experienced landings of three Cat. 5 hurricanes.

Jonathan Erdman is the senior meteorologist at Weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather conditions are his favorite topics. Contact him at X (formerly Twitter), Topics, Facebook And Bluesky.