EASTERN PACIFIC SEASON MAP
1950 Pacific hurricane season
8 recorded storms from Jun 14, 1950 to Oct 3, 1950
Last updated
The 1950 Pacific hurricane season produced 7 tropical storms and 6 hurricanes, none of them major. Every hurricane in the archive peaked at 75 kt, Category 1, and the first of them formed off southern Mexico on 14 June. Hurricane Hiki brought the season's heaviest impact, flooding rains on Hawaii in August. Read more
Drag to pan. Pinch or Ctrl/⌘ + scroll to zoom. Keyboard: plus or minus to zoom, arrow keys to pan, and 0 to show the whole map.
8 storms with an IBTrACS 1950 hurricane season record. Tracks are the archived center positions, first observation Jun 14, 1950, last Oct 3, 1950.
Tropical-stage US-agency wind of 39 mph or more
74 mph or more, one-minute sustained
110 mph or more, Saffir–Simpson scale
158 mph or more at any tropical-stage observation
86 mph
No tropical-stage pressure in the archive
Unnamed, full archive record
Mapped, but outside the counts above
SEASON HISTORY
Six hurricanes of equal strength
The archive holds eight tracks for 1950. Seven reached tropical storm strength, six of them hurricane strength, and accumulated cyclone energy totalled 53.6. The eighth track, a system tracked from 14 to 30 August, carries no wind data, so the site leaves it out of the counts. The current best track likewise lists seven cyclones, and with only ships and sparse coastal settlements to report them, other storms probably went unseen.
The best track gives six of the seven storms the same 75 kt peak, and the single tropical storm peaked at 45 kt. Those flat values reflect how little observers could measure in 1950. The site treats the June hurricane off Mexico as the season's strongest because it reached 75 kt first.
Mexican coast storms and an empty September
The first hurricane formed southwest of Puerto Ángel on 14 June, turned away from the coast near Acapulco and ran parallel to Mexico before passing within about 20 miles of the Islas Marías on 19 June. Two July hurricanes followed. One formed southwest of Manzanillo and tracked along Baja California before dissipating north-northwest of Cabo San Lucas; the other passed about 70 miles from Socorro Island and moved into open water.
After 30 days without a new storm, August turned busy. A short-lived tropical storm south-southwest of Socorro Island lasted about a day, and a late-August hurricane far to the west tracked north-northwest across 140°W before dissipating east of Hilo on 30 August. September 1950 is the only known September with no Eastern Pacific cyclogenesis. A final hurricane formed southwest of Zihuatanejo on 1 October and faded near Socorro Island two days later.
Hurricane Hiki and Hawaii's rainfall record
Hiki formed southeast of Hawaii on 12 August, became a tropical storm the next day and reached hurricane strength a short distance north of the islands. The small storm paralleled the chain until 17 August, when high pressure pushed it southwest, and it dissipated on 21 August. The Air Weather Service on Guam also tracked the system and assigned it the name Salome from that year's western Pacific list.
Hiki dropped more than 52 inches of rain at the Kanalohuluhulu Ranger Station, the wettest tropical cyclone total in Hawaii until Hurricane Lane in 2018. The storm caused moderate damage and one death on Hawaii, the only known fatality of the season.
Further reading
QUICK ANSWERS
The 1950 season in brief
How many hurricanes were there in the 1950 Pacific hurricane season?
The archive records 6 hurricanes (one-minute winds of 74 mph or more) among 7 tropical storms, with 0 major hurricanes reaching 110 mph. Counts use US-agency winds during the tropical stage.
What was the strongest storm of the 1950 Pacific hurricane season?
Unnamed, with a peak one-minute sustained wind of 86 mph (Category 1) on Jun 14, 1950, 12:00 PM UTC.
How many Category 5 storms were there in 1950?
None. No storm in the 1950 Pacific hurricane season reached Category 5 on the Saffir–Simpson one-minute wind scale in the archive.
When did the 1950 Pacific hurricane season start and end?
The first tropical-stage observation is on Jun 14, 1950 and the last on Oct 3, 1950, from 8 tracked storms in the archive.
What was the first hurricane of the 1950 Pacific hurricane season?
Unnamed, which reached hurricane strength (74 mph) on Jun 14, 1950, 12:00 PM UTC.
METHODOLOGY
Data sources and limitations
The map and totals are generated from NOAA's IBTrACS v04r01 archive. A storm belongs to this page when the archive lists it in the Eastern Pacific basin for the 1950 season, so a December storm whose track ends in January stays with its season. Storms that cross between basins appear on the page of their archive basin only.
Counts use US-agency one-minute winds during the tropical stage: 34 kt for a tropical storm, 64 kt for hurricane strength and 96 kt for major intensity, on the Saffir–Simpson scale in every basin. Local agencies classify storms differently, and official season summaries can differ from the archive. Accumulated cyclone energy sums squared winds at six-hourly synoptic times, counting observations in the calendar year. Storms with no US-agency wind are mapped but cannot enter the counts.
The map frame is the same for every Eastern Pacific season, so a track that leaves it is cut at the edge. Lines show each storm's center, not its size, rainfall or flood extent. Coastlines use Natural Earth's 1:10m land data.
Archive retrieved
NOAA IBTrACS archive and Field documentation
Sources & methodology