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. 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 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.
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. 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. 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.
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