New hurricane study shows why Southeast Louisiana remains a frequent target

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]For generations, people along the Gulf Coast have lived with hurricanes, but new research puts hard numbers behind what so many in Southeast Louisiana already know. Our area is one of the biggest hurricane targets in the country. Meteorologist Peyton Maloney looked at the study to understand why this part of the coast is such a hurricane hotspot.

[00:00:28]>> Along the Louisiana coast, hurricanes, they're that unwanted visitor that never stay away for long.

[00:00:34]Ida, Katrina, Betsy, every generation has its storm. Some storms not even named, but a new study has put hard numbers behind even those unnamed storms. At first glance, this map, it's pretty overwhelming. More than a century and a half of hurricanes crowding the coastline. But buried in all those tracks is a clear pattern.

[00:00:55]Michael Ferragamo, a recent graduate from the University of Oklahoma and hurricane researcher, spent over a year digging through hurricane records. For his research, he looked at every hurricane to strike the US Gulf and Atlantic Coast going back to 1851.

[00:01:09]>> I did this to kind of help convey the risk side of of hurricane landfalls in the US a little bit more than just plotting them on a map.

[00:01:18]>> We wanted a closer look at this scenario, so we narrowed it down parish by parish and county by county. We saw Lafourche and Terrebonne top the list, then comes Plaquemines Parish with 33 strikes. St. Bernard following with 29, St. Mary with 27, Orleans Parish with 21, St. Tammany and Harrison County each with 20, and Hancock County with 18.

[00:01:41]So why is South Louisiana such a hotspot? Ferragamo says the answer is geography.

[00:01:48]>> You got hurricanes that can come in from three different angles, really. I mean, you've got hurricanes that can form and come in from the southwest like Francine did it years ago. You can have storms that form over the loop current and then come in from the south like Katrina did or Ida. Um and then you can also have storms that come in from the southwest.

[00:02:06]Southeast Louisiana does not just sit along the Gulf. In many places it reaches out into it. That gives hurricanes moving through the Gulf more of a chance to run into our coastline.

[00:02:15]And after studying 307 hurricanes over more than 170 years, that pattern is pretty clear. Southeast Louisiana is one of the places hurricanes find again and again. And for us, the question it's really never whether another hurricane will come, it's when. And it's also why we have to prepare every season just in case.