Lowest Central Pressure of Atlantic Storms 2025
About This Dataset
Lowest Central Pressure of Atlantic Storms 2025
What this chart shows
The lowest central pressure reached by each of the 13 named Atlantic storms of 2025, in millibars. For pressure the order runs the other way from wind: the lower the number, the more intense the storm, so Melissa at the top has the lowest reading.
How the data is collected
Pressures come from the 2025 entries of the HURDAT2 Atlantic best-track file published by the National Hurricane Center. Each storm's lowest value was taken from all of its best-track records while it was a tropical or subtropical cyclone, which includes the extra records NHC adds between the usual six-hourly times to mark landfalls and intensity peaks.
Background
The HURDAT2 documentation gives central pressure to the nearest millibar and marks missing values as -999; none of the 2025 Atlantic storms has a missing minimum. NHC's report on Melissa states that dropsonde data from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft showed the pressure had fallen to 892 mb. For Erin, the report puts the minimum central pressure at about 913 mb around 1800 UTC on 16 August.
Limits
A pressure reading depends on how a storm was measured. Aircraft dropsondes give a direct value, but not every storm is sampled that way, and NHC's reports describe some pressures as estimates from pressure-wind relationships instead. Pressure and wind do not always rank storms the same way: Karen, a subtropical storm with peak winds of 40 knots, reached 998 mb, lower than Jerry, Lorenzo and Chantal, which all had stronger winds.
The lowest central pressure reached by each of the 13 named Atlantic storms of 2025, in millibars. For pressure the order runs the other way from wind: the lower the number, the more intense the storm, so Melissa at the top has the lowest reading.
How the data is collected
Pressures come from the 2025 entries of the HURDAT2 Atlantic best-track file published by the National Hurricane Center. Each storm's lowest value was taken from all of its best-track records while it was a tropical or subtropical cyclone, which includes the extra records NHC adds between the usual six-hourly times to mark landfalls and intensity peaks.
Background
The HURDAT2 documentation gives central pressure to the nearest millibar and marks missing values as -999; none of the 2025 Atlantic storms has a missing minimum. NHC's report on Melissa states that dropsonde data from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft showed the pressure had fallen to 892 mb. For Erin, the report puts the minimum central pressure at about 913 mb around 1800 UTC on 16 August.
Limits
A pressure reading depends on how a storm was measured. Aircraft dropsondes give a direct value, but not every storm is sampled that way, and NHC's reports describe some pressures as estimates from pressure-wind relationships instead. Pressure and wind do not always rank storms the same way: Karen, a subtropical storm with peak winds of 40 knots, reached 998 mb, lower than Jerry, Lorenzo and Chantal, which all had stronger winds.
Analysis
Melissa's 892 mb is 21 millibars lower than the next storm, Erin on 913, and Humberto follows on 918. Gabrielle, at 944 mb, is the only other storm below 950. The gap between the five hurricanes and the rest is wide: Imelda's 966 mb is 32 millibars lower than the next reading, Karen's 998. Dexter and Fernand share 999 mb, and Jerry and Lorenzo share 1,000. Andrea is the highest at 1,014 mb, 122 millibars above Melissa.
Key Findings
🏆
Melissa records the lowest in Minimum central pressure (millibars) at 892 in 2025.
📊
Average Minimum central pressure (millibars) in 2025: 973 · median: 999.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- NOAA National Hurricane Center, HURDAT2 best-track database
- Coverage
- 13 entities · 2025 · 13 observations
- Measure
- Minimum central pressure (millibars)
- Last updated
- 16 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked lowest-first, because on this measure a lower number is the better result.
An article using this data
Hurricane Melissa Tied the Atlantic Wind Record in a Season With Three Category 5 Storms
NOAA's final 2025 hurricane data gives Melissa a peak of 165 knots, equal to Allen in 1980 and the highest in the Atlantic database. Five charts compare the 202...
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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