NOAA Forecasts Below-Average 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday issued its seasonal outlook for the Atlantic, giving a 55% chance of a below-average season. The agency forecasts 8 to 14 named storms, with 3 to 6 of them becoming strong enough to hit hurricane status and 1 to 3 of those intensifying to major hurricanes.

A normal hurricane season has 14 named storms, seven of them becoming hurricanes and three of them reaching major hurricane level, which is more than 110 mph (177 kph). Eighteen other groups, private and academic, have also forecasted what they think the season will be like and most of them also call for a below-average summer and fall.

This is after nine of the last 10 Atlantic hurricane seasons have been above normal or even hyperactive, according to Colorado State University hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach. Last year started slow, but then had a burst, producing a near-record total of three Category 5 hurricanes, including Melissa which devastated Jamaica and Cuba, said Suzana Camargo, a climate scientist and tropical weather expert at Columbia University.

It’s mostly because of an El Nino, Camargo said. An El Nino is the natural and cyclic warming of parts of the central Pacific that warps weather patterns around the globe, especially during winter. There’s a 98% chance that there will be an El Nino this summer and an 80% chance it will be moderate or strong, NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs said Thursday.

Atlantic hurricane seasons when an El Nino reaches strong or very strong status have two-thirds the named storms and half the hurricanes of the 1991-2020 average, according to an Associated Press analysis of storm and El Nino statistics.

Ninas have the opposite effect on storms in the central and eastern Pacific as they do in the Atlantic, so experts are expecting a busier season in those regions. Jacobs said there’s a 70% chance that the eastern Pacific will have an above-normal season. The eastern Pacific hurricane season started May 15 and the Atlantic season begins June 1 and both end November 30.