El Niño has erased the Atlantic hurricane season — for now.
We are already up to Sept. 9 without any hurricanes forming in the Atlantic Ocean basin, despite having five systems that have reached tropical storm status.
If no hurricane forms before Saturday, this will be the latest any Atlantic tropical season has gone without having a single hurricane since the start of the satellite era in 1960.
There is every reason to believe now that this new record will be set, with really no clear indication yet that a hurricane is likely to form at least for the next 7-10 days.
Before satellites, hurricanes weren’t known about unless they hit populated land areas, a ship, or in the early to mid 20th century, an airplane. It was possible for storms to form and peak out even as fairly strong hurricanes and then diminish without being detected.
But even before 1960, there were few years that went as late as September before the first hurricane formed in the Atlantic basin. There are no known Atlantic hurricanes recorded in 1907 and 1914, but it is quite possible one at least briefly formed somewhere outside of human observation.
It is doubtful, but not impossible, that this particular season will join 1907 and 1914 with no known hurricanes and a much stronger track record of observation to back it up.
Unambiguously, the major factor in the lack of hurricane development is almost certainly the rapidly intensifying El Niño in the equatorial Pacific. The warming of this stripe of sea surface temperatures appears headed to never-before-recorded levels, with weather influences around the world.
One such commonly observed influence in this year and many past ones has been a reduction of tropical system development in Atlantic. This is largely because of strong winds aloft that develop over the Atlantic Ocean, shredding the tops off any infant tropical systems that might aspire to become hurricanes.
Tropical systems need relatively still air aloft for them to grow from weak circulations over warm ocean waters to the mighty tempests rotating around an eye that we associate with the word “hurricane.” Rapid winds aloft can be like kryptonite for developing tropical systems.
This doesn’t mean the entire Atlantic tropical season, running June 1 through Nov. 30, will likely pass without one tropical system achieving the 74 mph sustained winds around a closed, warm core necessary to gain the label “hurricane.”
Sooner or later, there may be enough of a relaxation of the strong winds aloft over a portion of the ocean for at least one or two hurricanes to form, or else a subtle shift in the atmospheric furniture of high and low pressure for a somewhat more favorable pattern to develop for a tropical system to grow.
Or, perhaps even more likely, a hurricane may form quickly close to the U.S. coastline, where some of those high-shear conditions tend to not be as strong, and develop rapidly.
Tropical Storm Edouard nearly did that to end August.
Eduoard didn’t quite become a hurricane rolling into the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Texas, but it almost did, and probably would have with another six hours over open sea.
Regardless, it produced some stiff squalls along the coast, maintained its circulation for several hours just inland, and dumped enormous 10- to 20-inch rainfall amounts in a few hours on eastern Texas.
For the most part, not having hurricanes is generally a positive thing for the coastlines of the U.S. and other nations commonly affected, plus the inland regions that can get extreme flooding, as we recently discussed in comparing the catastrophic flooding in our region from hurricanes Camille (1969) and Helene (2024).
For dry areas of the southern and eastern U.S., including much of Virginia, there may be at least some concern that still-needed rain won’t be delivered to areas suffering long-term drought if the tropical season is too weak.
Tropical systems can and have figured into easing or ending drought situations in our region, but in general, it’s not the best way to overcome long-term dryness, especially given the potential for extraordinary flooding that may cause extreme hardship but ultimately not be a silver bullet for the drought.
We would be better served by getting eight 2-inch rains over three or four months rather than two 8-inch rains from the inland cloudbursts of tropical systems.
The El Niño currently at work weakening the Atlantic tropical season is likely to produce a strong subtropical jet stream later this fall or by winter that would bring wet storm systems across the southern half of the U.S.
We’ll be watching in the weeks ahead whether this pattern develops and delivers frequent soaking rains to our region. And we should at least keep half an eye on the tropical Atlantic just in case it yet spins up some mayhem in the face of El Niño.
Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley.
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