The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season was a very active hurricane season with sixteen named storms formed, including eight that became hurricanes and five that became major hurricanes. The season officially started on June 1 and ended on November 30. These dates conventionally delimit the period of each year when most tropical cyclones form in the Atlantic basin. However, the formation of Tropical Storm Arthur caused the season to start two days early. This season is the fourth most costly on record, behind only the 2004, 2005 and 2012 seasons, with over $47.5 billion in damage (2008 USD). It was the fourth busiest year since 1944 and the only year on record in which a major hurricane existed in every month from July through November in the North Atlantic. Bertha became the longest lived July tropical cyclone on record for the basin, the first of several long-lived systems during 2008. The season was devastating for Haiti, where over 800 people were killed by four consecutive tropical cyclones (Fay, Gustav, Hanna, and Ike), especially Hanna, in August and September. Ike was also the most destructive storm of the season, as well as the strongest, devastating Cuba as a major hurricane and later making landfall near Galveston, Texas at Category 2 (nearly Category 3) intensity.
One very unusual feat was a streak of tropical cyclones affecting land. All but one system impacted land in 2008. The unprecedented number of storms with impact led to one of the deadliest and destructive seasons in the history of the Atlantic basin, especially with Hurricane Ike, as its overall damages made it the third costliest hurricane in the Atlantic.
Read more about 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Seasonal Forecasts, Season Summary, Storm Names, Season Effects
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“Obscurest night involv’d the sky,
Th’ Atlantic billows roar’d,
When such a destin’d wretch as I,
Wash’d headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.”
—William Cowper (1731–1800)
“Thought and beauty, like a hurricane or waves, should not know conventional, delimited forms.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“She, O, she is fallen
Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea
Hath drops too few to wash her clean again
And salt too little which may season give
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—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)