Could El Niño mean no Atlantic hurricanes this year?
The Atlantic hurricane season has reached a remarkable milestone: September passed without a single hurricane forming in the basin. That hasn’t happened in more than three decades. September is usually the most active month for tropical cyclones, but this year the ocean stayed quiet.
With only two months left in the official season, which ends on 30 November, the chance that no hurricanes will develop at all is growing. If that happens, 2026 would be the first hurricane-free season in the satellite era, which began in the 1960s. The last year without a recorded hurricane was 1914, but that was before satellite monitoring, so it’s impossible to say with certainty that none formed.
El Niño’s grip on the Atlantic
The main culprit is El Niño, the natural warming of the tropical Pacific that can disrupt weather patterns around the globe. This year’s El Niño is forecast to be very strong. It’s already stifling Atlantic activity while fueling an extremely busy season in the eastern North Pacific.
Forecasters at Colorado State University say the strong El Niño is likely to disrupt wind patterns across the Atlantic. That would “likely result in below-normal activity” over the next two weeks, they said in a statement. The US National Hurricane Center sees no sign of any tropical storm activity or hurricane over the next week at least.
El Niño increases wind shear over the Atlantic—winds that change speed and direction with height can tear apart developing storms before they can organize. In the Pacific, warmer sea surface temperatures and more favorable winds give storms extra energy. This year, daily sea surface temperatures in a key region of the central-eastern Pacific have already broken the record set during the very strong El Niño of 2015.
So far, the eastern North Pacific has seen 17 named storms, including 9 hurricanes, 7 of them major. By a measure called Accumulated Cyclone Energy, the season is about two and a half times more active than normal at this point.
El Niño is predicted to continue strengthening, with forecasts suggesting it will peak in November or December. That means the Atlantic may stay quiet just as the season winds down.
