It appears we can put the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season to bed after Melissa. But that hasn't always been the case, even this late into November.
On Nov. 18, 1999, 26 years ago today, Hurricane Lenny ground through the Leeward Islands with damaging winds, storm surge and flooding rain.
Lenny first clobbered St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands the previous day as it reached its peak intensity (155 mph) teetering on Category 5 status. Wind gusts up to 112 mph were clocked, boats were either sunk or blown inland, some homes suffered roof damage and up to 8 inches of rain fell on the island. Up to 12 inches of rain fell in Puerto Rico, triggering mudslides.
Then Lenny began its slow 36-hour crawl through the rest of the Leeward Islands. Up to 34 inches of rain fell on St. Martin, while several other locations in the Leeward Islands picked up over a foot of rain.
Lenny was strange in two ways. First, it was the strongest November Atlantic basin hurricane in the satellite era before 2020's Iota.
Secondly, Lenny took on a long west-to-east path through the Caribbean Sea, a Caribbean path "unprecedented in the 113-year Atlantic basin tropical cyclone record",according to the National Hurricane Center. Most tropical storms and hurricanes take an east-to-west path through the Caribbean Sea.
That strange movement toward the east drove unprecedented battering waves and storm surge flooding into west-facing coastlines typically sheltered by the worst, including Dutch St. Maarten and St. Barthelemy.
Seventeen people died as a direct result of Lenny, which inflicted an estimated $330 million in damage in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands alone.
Because of Lenny's destruction, its name wasretiredand replaced with Lee on the 2005 naming list.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him onBluesky,X (formerly Twitter)andFacebook.