An eerily quiet 2026 Atlantic hurricane season has hit yet another milestone. It’s now been more than a century since the Atlantic has gone this long without a hurricane in a single season.
That season, in 1914, is also one of only two Atlantic seasons to never see a hurricane, from June through November, according to records going back to 1851.
There’s still time for this season, but we’re definitely trending toward zero. We’ve been in the heart of hurricane season for about two weeks now, and the Atlantic isn’t showing any movement in breaking this streak as we head into October.
Oct. 8 is the last date standing in the way of this season making history again. Oct. 8, 1905, was the latest the Atlantic see its first hurricane, according to NOAA records.
There is an important caveat — observations were far more limited back then, so storms that stayed well away from land could have easily gone undetected. But even with historical uncertainty, the satellite-era numbers are remarkable. Since satellites began routinely monitoring the tropics in 1966, we’ve never had an Atlantic season start this quietly.
The basin has managed just six named storms this season, all tropical storms.
El Niño clamping the brakes on the Atlantic
And there’s the obvious reason why — the strongest El Niño on record is continuing to set daily sea surface temperature records across the Equatorial Pacific.
As the hot water over the central and eastern Pacific continues to heat, the warmer water changes the way the atmosphere behaves thousands of miles away — increasing upper-level winds across the Atlantic tropics. These winds shred apart storms as they try to develop. Think of a developing tropical storm as a spinning column of thunderstorms. These storms need to stay vertically aligned to thrive, but strong wind shear rips them apart and tilts circulation, essentially ending the organization before it begins.
Meanwhile, in the Pacific, it’s been incredibly active – 18 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 5 majors, including Hurricane Polo that dramatically intensified from a tropical storm to a Category 5 monster within 24 hours.
It’s pretty wild to see such a dramatic difference in tropical activity between these two oceans, a testament to how strong this El Niño has become. Water temperatures across the El Niño region in the Equatorial Pacific have soared above 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), a level only reached during the exceptionally strong 2015-16 El Niño event.
And the latest trends suggest these waters could warm another degree by sometime in November.
Needless to say, El Niño has its fingerprints all over this hurricane season.
The season isn’t over yet
Nearly 40 percent of the Atlantic’s tropical activity occurs during the third week of September and later, so we still have a ways to go until the season officially wraps up on Nov. 30.
We may not get those long-tracked hurricanes forming from tropical waves ejecting over the Main Development Region from Western Africa, but we need to keep a close eye on the Gulf, Caribbean, and East Coast.
In fact, the developing coastal storm (and potential nor’easter) would certainly be considered tropical if it started off the east coast of Florida instead of the relatively cooler waters of Virginia. Waters are still very warm in these regions, and wind shear isn’t as strong as in the open Atlantic, so another spin-up storm or two is certainly possible.
It’s also worth noting that we’re in uncharted territory with this ongoing Super El Niño. Looking back at the data, since 1960, no October tropical systems have developed in the Gulf during Super El Niño events.
It doesn’t really reassure me that we’re going to have an easy stretch to close out the season, but rather smaller and shorter windows of opportunity for storms to form.
For now, the Atlantic looks to remain quiet and will likely finish as such. But as we’ve seen with extensive flooding from a couple of tropical storms early this season, quiet or hurricane-free doesn’t mean harmless.
Ken Mahan can be reached at ken.mahan@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @kenmahantheweatherman.