A strong El Niño is a foregone conclusion this year, as even NOAA’s main climate change-adjusted index for tracking its progress – known as the Relative Oceanic Niño Index or RONI – is fast approaching the threshold necessary to classify this a strong El Niño.
El Niño events – the abnormal warming of waters around the equator in the eastern Pacific – typically peak from November to January, but this one – only officially declared last month by NOAA – is warming at a clip not previously observed.
Forecast models are in near-unanimous agreement that we’ll observe one of the strongest El Niños on record – if not the strongest – by this winter.
As we’ve detailed in previous newsletters, El Niño events – particularly strong ones – are notorious for dampening hurricane activity in the Atlantic, largely due to changing wind patterns that increase hostile, storm-busting wind shear across the basin. But strong El Niños can also shift around the distribution of seasonal storm activity across the Gulf, Caribbean and wider Atlantic, condensing activity and often leading to an earlier-than-usual end to the season.
In the chart above, you can see how seasonal activity during the peak months of August, September and October gets “pinched” in strong El Niño years relative to all years of the satellite era (since 1966). This means when activity ramps up, it may come a little later in August and feel a little steeper, but peaking around the same time in early September, then tailing off more quickly in October into early November.
Interestingly, Atlantic hurricane seasons in strong El Niño years also tend to see relatively busier Junes and quieter Julys compared to what we might expect in a typical season.
The quieting of late season (October-November) hurricane activity is well documented in previous research and makes sense physically, with wind shear ramping up deeper into the season as El Niño strengthens into the fall and winter months.
Of course, every hurricane season is unique and none ever follows the seasonal activity charts exactly as we might expect (see the mid-season lulls of 2024 and 2025), but given the backloaded seasons of recent years, none of us would complain if 2026 packs it up early.
For now, the Atlantic is following the El Niño script nicely, with tropical tumbleweeds blowing through the basin at least for the next week or two. Even deeper into July, long-range models continue to show very little to speak of, so enjoy the quiet stretch ahead.
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