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No Atlantic Ocean hurricanes 103 days into season
September 13, 2026
El Nino has kept the Atlantic Ocean hurricane-free for a record 103 days, and forecasters point to unusually strong wind shear as the reason.
The Atlantic hurricane season officially runs from the beginning of June to the end of November, peaking in September, and El Nino conditions have long been known to hold down storm formation in the Atlantic Ocean.
Key facts
- The clearest example is 1992, a season of only seven storms that still delivered Hurricane Andrew's devastating Category 5 strike on South Florida in August.
- The Atlantic's tally stands at five modest tropical storms, while the eastern Pacific has produced 16 named storms and the central Pacific 20.
- Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane specialist at Colorado State University, said the season reached its statistical high point Thursday carrying only five brief tropical storms, making it the quietest on the books back to 1950.
- The Atlantic Ocean has gone 103 days into the season without a single hurricane, the longest such stretch ever recorded, as an enormous El Nino chokes off storms in their early stages.
- Historically a bit more than half of a season's activity arrives after September 10, but El Nino looks set to hold down the Atlantic's closing months this year.
AP News carries the account of a hurricane season that has yet to produce a single hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean, held down by an El Nino strong enough to smother systems in their first hours. CBS News reports that none has appeared so far this year and that the National Hurricane Center sees none coming for another week, a stretch that would ordinarily sit at the height of the season. CNN counts the wait at 103 days, longer than any previously logged, with the first hurricane overdue by more than a month and nothing visible ahead of it. The New York Times carries the same blank column for the season to date.
On cause the accounts converge. CBS News reports that El Nino's heaviest mark on the Atlantic Ocean is wind shear at record strength, winds from the east striking a young system near the surface while winds from the west shove its upper reaches the opposite way, and that air sinking under high pressure adds a second brake. Kerry Emanuel, a meteorology professor at MIT, tells CBS News the ocean has fallen behind the air, since Atlantic water is warm but has not heated as fast as an atmosphere lifted quickly by El Nino, and his work points to the gap between air and water temperature rather than water temperature alone. Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University, quoted by CBS News, says El Nino is hammering the Atlantic Ocean and calls the effect impressive. Kristen Corbosiero, an atmospheric science professor at the University at Albany, tells CBS News that conditions leave the Atlantic Ocean close to uninhabitable for anything trying to spin up as a tropical cyclone.
The figures agree rather than compete. CBS News puts activity at 7% of normal for the date, with five small tropical storms in the Atlantic basin set against 16 named storms in the eastern Pacific and 20 in the central Pacific. CNN counts the same five, all short lived, and cites Klotzbach for the finding that no season since 1950 has run this slow. Neither treats a thin count as safety. CNN notes that Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5, tore into South Florida in August 1992 during a season that produced seven storms in all, and that just over 50% of a season's activity typically comes after September 10. What is settled is the absence and the mechanism behind it. What is not is the standing of the mark itself, which CNN reports is still being reviewed and certified.
Kristen Corbosiero, an atmospheric science professor at the University at Albany, said, "It's really staggering, just how inhospitable the Atlantic is to anything that could form a tropical cyclone right now."
Still developing
The accounts give the same version of the record-long wait for a first hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean, and no different figure or framing appears in the record by the time of draft.
How settled the reporting is
Sources
- CBS News — Powerful El Niño creates conditions for a record-low Atlantic hurricane season
- CNN — El Niño has broken Atlantic hurricanes. Now the season is breaking records
- apnews.com — Where have all the Atlantic hurricanes gone? El Nino might bring record slow storm season