Skip to content

Thursday, Sep. 2, 2021

Did five hurricanes—Katrina, Gustav, Issac, Harvey and Ida—make US landfall on the same day in different years?

Kaiyah Clarke, Lead Stories

no

Contrary to a social media post saying five major hurricanes all hit the U.S. on August 29, two of the five storms made landfall on other days.

The five were closely bunched together on the calendar, however. A scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University said this is because "highly impactful storms typically occur in late August and early September since that's when the Atlantic hurricane season tends to be at its busiest."

Of the five hurricanes listed in the post — Katrina, Gustav, Isaac, Harvey and Ida — Katrina, Isaac and Ida did in fact make landfall on the U.S. mainland on August 29, in different years.

According to the National Weather Service, Hurricane Gustav hit on September 1, 2008, and Hurricane Harvey made landfall on on August 26, 2017.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.

Learn More

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.