The Atlantic is quiet — record quiet — this hurricane season thanks to an enormous El Nino that crushes storms before they get going.
On Saturday, 2026 set a record for the longest a season has begun without a storm that has reached winds of 74 mph to qualify as a hurricane — at least in the satellite era, said Nick Novella, a meteorologist at the government’s Weather Prediction Center. Several experts pointed to 1992, which kicked off late but nastily with devastating Hurricane Andrew. This story corrects the wind speed in paragraph 3.
Because ocean monitoring wasn’t complete, before the 1950s there were a few years where no hurricanes were recorded this late in the season, but meteorologists don’t trust those records. Because it just takes one storm, even during an El Nino, to be catastrophic, people shouldn’t let down their guard. Because hurricanes are powered by the flow of heat from the ocean to the air, the higher that is, the less storm activity there will be, his research found what matters more than just the water temperature is the difference in temperature between the air and the water;. Because scientists have long known about El Nino’s effects on storm activity in both oceans, forecasters months ago predicted a slow Atlantic hurricane season.
“It’s just hammering the Atlantic. “We haven’t even had anything really even close to a hurricane. “This is quite remarkable. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. is solely responsible for all content. Find ’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at .org . This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
“It’s really staggering, just how inhospitable the Atlantic is to anything that could form a tropical cyclone right now,” said Kristen Corbosiero, a University at Albany atmospheric science professor. “Anything that tries to form is just getting this triple whammy” of winds that decapitate a storm, dry air that starves it and downward pushing winds that basically stomp it. Those three forces are classic impacts of El Nino , the natural and temporary warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific that warps and warms weather worldwide, five experts told The Associated Press. It’s just impressive,” Klotzbach said. The trouble is the Atlantic waters, while warm, haven’t warmed up nearly as quickly as the atmosphere above, which got hotter quickly as part of El Nino, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel. “I don’t think anyone really foresaw it being this quiet,” McNoldy said.
Only five relatively weak and brief tropical storms have spun up this season. Overall hurricane activity using a measurement that factors in the number of storms, their strength and how long they last is also at a post-1950 record low, according to Colorado State University hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach. Storm activity in the Atlantic is only 7% of normal for this time of year.
No Atlantic hurricanes have formed yet this year and none are likely to form for at least another week, even though this would normally be the peak of the season, according to the National Hurricane Center.
In the area between Africa and the Caribbean where the strongest storms normally form and head west, that wind shear is about 45 mph more than what a tropical cyclone can withstand, Corbosiero said. This is all despite warm waters — the world’s oceans have been record hot for 100 days — that normally feed storms. In the central Pacific, activity is about 40% more than normal. there have been 16 named storms in the eastern Pacific and 20 in the central Pacific While the Atlantic has had only five small tropical storms.
The biggest El Nino effect in the Atlantic is record-strong wind shear, which is when strong easterly winds hit a storm system at low levels while strong westerly winds push it the other way at upper altitudes. The one area where wind shear hasn’t been high has been the Gulf of Mexico and those storms tend to really get going later in the season, so there could still be some strong ones coming to that region, Corbosiero and others warned. The waters of the Atlantic are a few months behind the atmosphere in feeling the El Nino effect. Just as El Nino traditionally dampens Atlantic hurricane season, it tends to rev up tropical cyclone activity in the Pacific, with moist air and little wind shear. And so far this year, storm activity in the eastern Pacific is nearly double normal, with hurricanes lasting much longer than usual. Hawaii has been hit twice .
The result is that they “tear apart” the storm, Corbosiero said. That’s an unheard of level, she said. “Their heads are cut off before they even have a chance,” said University of Miami hurricane expert Brian McNoldy. Along with the dry air that starves the storm, African dust is choking it and there are fewer “seeds” of stormy weather that could develop, all classic El Nino signs, the experts said. And in the Atlantic, high pressure is pushing the air downward, which also hinders storms from forming, they said. It shows the power of El Nino to overcome that, Klotzbach said. But next year, as the El Nino winds down and cools closer to normal, the warm water will persist, which will increase the odds for next season to be extra busy, Emanuel said. “It’s just a party out there, one right after the other in the eastern Pacific,” Klotzbach said. El Nino tends to push storms farther west than other years, Corbosiero said.
