Blame Super El Niño For This Strange Hurricane Season

The Atlantic Ocean is nearing an all-time record. So far, no hurricanes have formed this year—and if a hurricane ends up forming after October 8, it will surpass 1905 as the latest a hurricane has ever formed in the Atlantic.

Atlantic hurricane season stretches from the beginning of June to the end of November, reaching its peak in September. On average, there are around seven hurricanes every year. Only two years are known to have had no hurricanes whatsoever—1907 and 1914—but that was before satellites made records as robust as they are today, so there may have been smaller storms that went unrecorded.

This year those gyrating storms have spun up out West instead, in the waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean near the coasts of Central America, Mexico, the Hawaiian Islands, and California. Most recently, Tropical Storm Nolo charted a course for Hawai’i, and Hurricane Polo exploded into a Cat 5 storm southwest of Mexico.

This year’s Super El Niño is helping drive the unusual hurricane season.

An El Niño is a climate pattern that develops every two to seven years. Depending on fluctuations in trade winds, the equatorial stretch of the Pacific starts running a fever for months at a time—scientifically labelled the El Niño Southern Oscillation—before cooling back down. Tree rings and sediment cores show these fluctuations have occurred for at least 11,000 years. But this year’s El Niño is shaping up to be one of the hottest in centuries. Whether or not that’s due to climate change is still debated by experts; eight scientists recently told the New York Times they see evidence that that’s the case.

Regardless, those hot ocean temperatures are pushing this year’s hurricane season into weirder territory. In the Atlantic, it’s resulting in strong wind shear, the type of winds that shred and topple hurricanes before they get a chance to form.

Think of a tall column extending from the surface of the ocean up about five miles into the atmosphere. Along this column, wind might change the speed or direction it’s blowing. If it changes very little, wind "shear" is weak; if the wind along this column blows at different speeds or in different directions, wind shear is strong.

El Niños produce strong wind shear because warm Pacific waters generate stronger winds higher up in the atmosphere than winds at lower heights. Those disparately moving winds unspool the tight circular formation needed to create a hurricane.

These winds are well known to result in quieter hurricane seasons. That’s why early in the year, scientists predicted that a then-likely El Niño would mellow out the 2026 hurricane season, resulting in just three to six hurricanes. But to have none at all is unusual.

Phil Klotzbach, a meteorologist at Colorado State University, says he’s observed above average wind shear this year in key areas of the Atlantic where hurricanes are likely to form. Since July, Klotzbach explained in an email, wind shear has been the strongest on record since 1979, when record keeping for this type of weather pattern began.

There are also a couple factors unrelated to El Niño that have helped quiet this year’s hurricane season. In the summer, a plume of dust from the Saharan Desert made its way from Africa to the Americas, which helped suppress hurricane activity by creating dry, unstable air. Scientists also pointed out it was possible a warmer atmosphere also killed the heat engine that drives hurricanes by making the atmosphere more stable, a climate phenomenon the Washington Post explained earlier this year.

While El Niño conditions have been keeping hurricanes quiet in the Atlantic, the warm water that characterizes this climate pattern has been creating the hot conditions to fuel hurricanes in the Pacific. It’s been about 5°C hotter than normal near the Pacific region where storms have been forming. Not far from Hurricane Polo, Hurricane Odalys is currently moving northeast toward the coast of Mexico. Tropical storm Nolo seems likely to form a hurricane.

On average, around eight hurricanes typically form each year in this part of the Pacific Ocean, and eight have been documented so far—five of them major hurricanes. But that doesn't quite tell the full story of how active the Pacific has been. One way scientists measure the intensity of a single hurricane season is by looking at “Accumulated Cyclone Energy” or ACE. And so far, the eastern Pacific has the fourth highest amount of ACE ever seen by late September. That means these are strong storms lasting for long stretches of time.

Klotzbach points out that it’s still possible we may see an Atlantic hurricane. And it only takes one hurricane to cause major destruction.

Meanwhile there will be other storms the East Coast will need to prepare for.

One oncoming weather event that isn’t connected to El Niño conditions is the nor’easter brewing along the East Coast. Scott Kleebauer, a meteorologist at the Weather Prediction Office, says that’s actually normal for this time of year. During the summer months, heat builds over the northern hemisphere, Kleebaeur explains. As we lose more sunlight, the heat wanes and more cold Arctic air flows in. It’s the colliding force of this new cold air and residual warm air that can create the unstable conditions that allow nor’easters to form.

El Niño might come into play for the Southeast and East later in the year. Kleebauer says the Pacific’s hot water could lead to a wetter winter in the mid-Atlantic and the South. If that wet weather meets cold air, it could be an exceptionally snowy one too. Whether that snowfall could break any records remains a major question mark, but given the strength of this year’s El Niño, it’s unlikely to be the last record-breaking weather event we see.