DirecOne perspective / October 8, 2026
What a hurricane record can and cannot tell you
We checked 175 seasons of storm tracks against Trinidad. Here is what we found, and what we refuse to conclude from it.
“Below the hurricane belt” is a phrase that appears in a great many brochures about Trinidad. We wanted to know exactly what it rests on, so we went to the source: the Atlantic hurricane database kept by the United States National Hurricane Center, which records the position and strength of every known storm since 1851.
The database holds 2,004 storms across 175 seasons. Of those, 342 reached major hurricane strength, Category 3 or above. We compared every track with the island.
What we found. Two hurricanes have crossed Trinidad in the record: one in 1878 and one in 1933. Both were Category 1. No hurricane of Category 2 or above has crossed the island. The closest the centre of a major hurricane has come is roughly 100 kilometres to the north, when Ivan passed in 2004. Beryl, in 2024, passed a little further away.
What that does not mean. It does not mean a hurricane cannot strike. Records from the nineteenth century are thinner than modern ones. Tobago, our sister island to the north-east, was hit hard by Flora in 1963. And a storm does not need to be a hurricane to flood a street or cut a power line.
So we use the record for what it is: a real geographic advantage, and one layer of a continuity plan. The other layers are the ones we build ourselves, with backup power, more than one route for our network and recovery procedures that have been rehearsed. A map is not a plan.