El Niño creates record-low Atlantic hurricane season

The Atlantic is quiet — record quiet — this hurricane season thanks to an enormous El Niño that crushes storms before they get going.

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. The season officially runs from the beginning of June until the end of November. It normally peaks between August and October. Only five relatively weak and brief tropical storms have spun up this season.

On Saturday, 2026 set a record for the longest a season has begun without a storm that has reached winds of 64 mph to qualify as a hurricane — at least in the satellite era, said Nick Novella, a meteorologist at the government's Weather Prediction Center. 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 ocean monitoring wasn't complete.

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. A team of experts from Colorado State University predicted in their 2026 annual hurricane report that nine named storms would form in the Atlantic basin.

People shouldn't let down their guard because it just takes one storm, even during an El Niño, to be catastrophic. Several experts pointed to 1992, which kicked off late but nastily with devastating Hurricane Andrew. Less powerful storms can also be dangerous.

"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 Niño, the natural and temporary warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific that warps and warms weather worldwide, five experts told The Associated Press. The last time an El Niño pattern occurred was in 2023. An El Niño pattern occurs every two to seven years.

"It's just hammering the Atlantic. It's just impressive," Klotzbach said. "We haven't even had anything really even close to a hurricane."

The biggest El Niño 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 result is they "tear apart" the storm, Corbosiero said.

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.