How we prepare an EIA: a real report, page by page30 pages of an environmental impact study built on the platform, with a voice that walks you through them.Browse the reportEvery tropical storm, hurricane and typhoon from 1980 to 15 October 2026: 4,046 storms, their tracks and their strength, cell by cell, from NOAA’s worldwide archive.
From 1980 to 2025, 344 tropical storms passed within 100 km of China’s land, 342 of Japan’s, 326 of Mexico’s, 307 of the Philippines’, 213 of Australia’s and 191 of the United States’. For China and Japan that is about 7.5 a year: the most exposed country gets a storm every seven weeks on average.
Open on the map →The Philippines is not the country with the most storms, but the one where the strongest arrive: since 1980, 93 cyclones of category 3 or more (winds from 178 km/h) have passed within 100 km of the archipelago, against 86 for Japan, 48 for Mexico and 33 for the United States.
Open on the map →Of the 4,046 storms since 1980, 1,190 (29%) formed in the western North Pacific, 817 in the eastern North Pacific, 741 in the South Indian Ocean, 618 in the Atlantic, 446 in the South Pacific and 233 in the North Indian Ocean. Atlantic hurricanes, the most reported, are 15% of the total.
Open on the map →Storms of tropical strength have numbered about 87 a year in every decade since 1980: 834 in the 1980s, 863 in the 2010s. What has grown is the share that reaches category 3 or more: 24% in the 1980s, 31% in the 2010s, 27% in 2016-2025. Part of the change comes from better satellites and methods: reanalysing the images with a single method, Kossin et al. (PNAS 2020) still find that the probability of a cyclone becoming major grew by about 8% per decade between 1979 and 2017.
Open on the map →From 1980 to 2025, 221 cyclones reached category 5, with sustained winds of 252 km/h or more: almost five a year. The category view of the map shows the belts they reach: the western North Pacific, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific off Mexico, the South Indian Ocean as far as Madagascar and Australia.
Open on the map →By 15 October 2026 the year’s tropical storms number 80, 26 of them of category 3 or more, while the average of a full year from 1980 to 2025 is 86.9. The record is 2020 with 105 storms, the calmest year 2010 with 68. The 2026 data are provisional: the agencies revise them when they publish the final tracks.
Open on the map →Each hexagon counts the storms of tropical strength or more (sustained winds from 63 km/h) whose track passed within 100 km of its centre, and the map shows them as storms per year over the chosen period. A storm counts once per cell and per year, however long it stays. It is a measure of exposure, not of damage: it does not say where the cyclone made landfall or how much rain it brought.
IBTrACS, NOAA’s worldwide archive of tropical cyclone tracks, which brings together the data of all the responsible weather agencies, updated to 15 October 2026. Most tracks of 2025 and 2026 are provisional and may change when the agencies publish the final ones. The period starts in 1980, in the satellite era: before, many storms out at sea went unseen.
The category is the Saffir-Simpson one computed by the US agencies from the one-minute sustained wind: tropical storm from 63 km/h, category 1 from 119, 3 from 178, 5 from 252. Other agencies, such as the Japanese or the Australian one, measure the wind over ten minutes and use their own scales: that is why the category here may differ from the one in local news.
A storm counts for a country if its track passed within 100 km of a cell of about 250 km² that belongs to the country: the cell takes the Natural Earth country its centre falls in, or the nearest one within 25 km for coasts and islands. Some territories are entries of their own (the Northern Mariana Islands, for example), the French overseas departments count with France.
Frequently asked questions
From 1980 to 2025 storms of tropical strength averaged 86.9 a year, from a low of 68 in 2010 to a high of 105 in 2020. More than one in four becomes a cyclone of category 3 or more.
Counting the storms that passed within 100 km from 1980 to 2025: China 344, Japan 342, Mexico 326, the Philippines 307, Australia 213, the United States 191. For cyclones of category 3 or more the first country is the Philippines, with 93 since 1980.
The number of storms is stable, about 87 a year, while the share that reaches category 3 or more went from 24% in the 1980s to 31% in the 2010s. On homogeneous data Kossin et al. (PNAS 2020) estimate a growth of about 8% per decade between 1979 and 2017.
No: since 1980 no storm of tropical strength has passed within 100 km of Italy. Medicanes, the Mediterranean cyclones that sometimes take on some of their features, are a different phenomenon and are not part of this archive.
From IBTrACS, NOAA’s worldwide archive of tropical cyclone tracks (version 4r01, updated to 15 October 2026), aggregated by XNatura on H3 hexagon cells.
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