On Wednesday, the team of hurricane experts at Colorado State University (CSU) issued their June forecast update for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, reducing their predictions from their earlier April outlook, and now calls for the lowest tropical activity seen across the basin since 2015.
The pioneering forecast team – the first group to issue seasonal hurricane outlooks, starting in 1984 – predicts 11 named storms and 5 hurricanes across the Atlantic in 2026, with 2 hurricanes reaching “major” Category 3, 4, or 5 status.
This is below the 30-year average of 14 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 Category 3 or stronger hurricanes. Most noticeably, CSU’s predictions for Accumulated Cyclone Energy or ACE, a seasonal scorecard that considers storm intensity and duration, is reduced by about 40% compared to the 30-year average. The team also predicts the odds of a Category 3 or stronger hurricane hitting the U.S. in 2026 to be nearly cut in half from 43% (1880-2020 average) to 23%.
Though the pre-season predictions are heartening after a decade of mostly above-average or hyperactive Atlantic hurricane seasons, devastating hurricanes can strike even during down years. Hurricane Andrew was the only Category 3 or stronger hurricane to form in 1992 – a very inactive season with a meager 7 named storms – but its catastrophic impact on South Florida made it one of the costliest U.S. disasters on record.
El Niño officially arrives
Earlier today, NOAA and the National Weather Service officially declared El Niño conditions present in the eastern tropical Pacific.
The abnormal warmth across the main El Niño monitoring region used by NOAA (termed the Nino 3.4 region) is at record warmth for the time of year and so far the warmup is outpacing other strong El Niños that began in 2023, 2015, 1997, and 1982. El Niño conditions typically peak in the late fall or winter months.
Seasonal forecast models used to predict El Niño continue to suggest a historic and potentially record-setting El Niño in the works.
This rapid transition to El Niño is the primary reason we expect much lower-than-average activity this Atlantic hurricane season. Abnormally warm waters in the tropical eastern Pacific – especially during strong El Niños – increase wind shear (the difference in wind strength and direction with altitude) over the Caribbean and main development region of the Atlantic. Wind shear is a deterrent to organized tropical activity as it works to topple would-be storms.
Not surprisingly, seasonal forecast models are predicting the highest wind shear on record (back to 1981) for the Atlantic main development region this fall due to the strong El Niño conditions.
While El Niño can take on different flavors – such as El Niño Modoki (Japanese for “similar but different), where warming is concentrated in the central Pacific and Atlantic, hurricane activity is less affected like during the busy 2004 hurricane season – the current El Niño is as textbook as it gets and is considered a canonical or classical El Niño, with major impacts expected globally.
Chances for Gulf development remain low
As we’ve covered in this newsletter since last week, the now remnants of once Tropical Storm Cristina in the eastern Pacific are crossing over Central America and expected to merge with a tropical disturbance approaching from the west over the southern reaches of the Gulf and Bay of Campeche on Friday.
Forecast models continue to show only a narrow window for development tomorrow and Saturday before the system moves inland over northeastern Mexico by early Sunday.
It’s worth noting that a small handful of members from Google’s DeepMind machine learning-based hurricane model suggest residual spin could hang off the Texas coast into early next week and develop over the northern Gulf before being deflected eastward by an approaching cold front in about a week.
For now, these are outliers and not shown in the physics-based models. Even DeepMind’s newest 1,000-member hurricane ensemble indicates about a 10% chance of this scenario playing out.
Nevertheless, given DeepMind’s impressive performance last season, we’ll keep an eye on the trends in the days ahead.
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