Forecasters are raising the possibility that the Atlantic hurricane season could end without a single hurricane, after a powerful El Niño helped keep August and September, usually the busiest stretch, free of storms.
“We are witnessing one of the most extraordinary Atlantic hurricane seasons in modern history,” Alex DaSilva, the lead hurricane expert at AccuWeather, said, according to Yale Environment 360. “There is an increasingly likely scenario in which the Atlantic season ends without a single hurricane for the first time in more than a century.” The last time was 1914, and before that 1907.
Even those years come with an asterisk. Early weather watchers could easily have missed storms that formed over remote stretches of ocean, so 1907 and 1914 may not have been hurricane-free at all. Reliable records date only to 1966, the year the United States began routine satellite weather monitoring.
Warm water is not the problem. Sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic are the second warmest on record. But a Super El Niño, which scientists say has been intensified by warming, is driving strong westerly winds that block hurricanes from forming, said John Morales, a meteorologist at the NBC affiliate in Miami. “Plus, the air over the Atlantic basin has been mostly sinking,” he said. “Clouds don’t form in sinking air,” let alone the clusters of thunderstorms that grow into cyclones. Dry air has smothered whatever was left.
The same Super El Niño is expected to be far deadlier elsewhere. University of Chicago researchers project 451,000 extra heat deaths by February, most of them in the Sahel.
The odds favor the quiet season. The Atlantic typically peaks in late August and early September, and the chances of a hurricane drop afterward; of the three previous Super El Niños, only one produced an Atlantic hurricane after Oct. 1.
Mr. Morales still counseled against looking away. “Don’t tune out. Stay informed,” he said. “But fingers crossed that the rest of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season stays as dead as a doornail.”