Three major hurricanes (Matthew, Irma and Dorian) came within miles of southeast Florida in recent years, but all missed. There’s a sobering reason why.

Dorian’s hurricane winds came within 60 miles of West Palm Beach. Irma’s closest reach was about 30 miles. And Matthew shaved by with just 20 miles of ocean between the coast and sustained gales of 75 mph or higher.

That’s three close calls for Palm Beach County in four years with major hurricanes that at one time or another had the area deep in the clutches of their cones of uncertainty.

While geography and jet streams work to protect North Florida from ruinous hurricane landfalls, the lack of recent head-on collisions with the Sunshine State’s southeastern coast has a sobering explanation – dumb luck.

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A bobble here, an eyewall replacement cycle there, Cuba, and fortuitous steering currents, have acted as unwitting benefactors to the Gold Coast since a decade-long cyclone cease fire ended in 2016 when Hermine landed in the Big Bend region Sept. 2.

"There is no reason in nature that Dorian’s whole track could not have happened 100 miles west, it’s just that it didn’t," said Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. “On the flip side, just shift the whole thing 3 degrees the other way and it would have been a non-event.”

Palm Beach County isn’t immune to land-falling hurricanes. The infamous Lake Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928 came ashore at West Palm Beach as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 16. Its deadly track caused a storm surge on the lake that flooded hundreds of square miles and killed at least 2,500 people in Florida.

In 1933, an unnamed Category 3 hurricane landed on the then-sparsely populated shores of Juno Beach. An unnamed Category 4 came ashore in 1949 just south of Lake Worth.

"Storm losses over $6 million here," The Palm Beach Post-Times headline read on Aug. 28, 1949 two days after the hurricane made landfall.

But an area doesn’t have to suffer a crushing landfall to feel storm effects. The hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 when Palm Beach County was buffeted by hurricanes Frances, Jeanne and Wilma are proof of that.

A few miles can make a world of difference with storms

McNoldy, who mapped the hurricane swaths of Matthew, Irma and Dorian, said the sliver of southeast Florida that escaped sustained hurricane-force winds is a clear example of how just a few miles can make a difference in Florida’s thin Peninsula.

"Those tracks are easily within the noise level of what could have been a direct hit versus a near miss," he said.

Tropical cyclones drift through the atmosphere like corks in a stream, guided by lofty winds whose influence ebbs and flows around the globe.

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For South Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, key upper-air players include the Bermuda High. In the winter, the Bermuda High shifts east toward the Azores. It moves west closer to Bermuda in the summer with a clockwise flow that can guide storms toward the Caribbean and the U.S. coast.

If the high is too close to the coast, it can push a storm right into the Gulf of Mexico, Florida or zip it around its western edge to skim the Eastern seaboard.

"Even in busy years, hurricanes are random events," said David Titley, an affiliate professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University. "It’s just easy for us humans to try to see patterns where there are none. We love to make up patterns and explanations."

How we wriggled out of Hurricane Matthew’s wrath

With 2016’s Hurricane Matthew, Palm Beach County was spared hurricane winds by the erosion of a high pressure ridge that allowed the storm to jog north before reaching the beach. An eastern wobble in the storm’s track as it underwent an eyewall replacement cycle also helped. Eyewall replacement cycles happen in high intensity storms when outer rain bands strengthen, move inward and draw moisture from the inner eyewall. The cycle can weaken the storm temporarily.

Matthew produced a 50-mph wind gust at Palm Beach International Airport, with sustained winds of 33 mph.

How we avoided Hurricane Irma’s intensity

Irma’s worst was mitigated by the grace of Cuba's northern coast, which was abraded by the strong Category 4 storm before it reached the Florida Straits. A tongue of dry air that sucked into the hurricane’s massive, state-swallowing wind field weakened it slightly before making its first landfall on Sept. 10, 2017 at Cudjoe Key.

A subtle wiggle west that made Marco Island its second landfall target kept Irma’s deepest and deadliest storm surge away from Naples, Fort Myers and Tampa.

How we ducked Hurricane Dorian’s damage

A slowdown in Dorian’s forward speed allowed the Bermuda High to shimmy to the east, making room for the hurricane to jag northwest as an upper-level trough swooped in to save South Florida. That gain, however, left the northern Bahamas to Dorian’s repeated battering, with up to 185-mph winds.

"Even a small difference in speed, a mile or two per hour, would have made a big difference in where the trough could have picked the storm up," said Michael Brennan, the National Hurricane Center’s hurricane specialist branch chief, about Dorian’s track. "It’s a really fine line when you are dealing with a hurricane like that."

Not many storms hit North Florida, but some have

Hurricanes are less likely to make landfall in North Florida where the coast goes concave at Cape Canaveral and the rushing jet stream dips deeper as August turns to early fall – the peak of hurricane season.

Hurricane Dora in 1964 was the most notable North Florida landfall, hitting St. Augustine as a Category 3 storm on Sept. 10. An unnamed 1926 Category 2 hurricane came ashore near New Smyrna beach in July. A similarly anonymous Category 1 hit just north of Cape Canaveral in 1915.

But that’s compared to at least three dozen hurricanes that pierced the state’s east coast below the Cape since 1851.

And then there are those three recent near misses.

"Those misses are just really inherent variability, just randomness," Titley said. "You cannot let your guard down because at some point, that randomness will come back to you in an unlucky way."

Kmiller@pbpost.com

@Kmillerweather