{"id":3477,"date":"2026-09-26T17:24:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T16:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/september-2026-atlantic-remains-hurricane-free-as-scientists-explain-the-anomaly\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T17:24:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T16:24:57","slug":"september-2026-atlantic-remains-hurricane-free-as-scientists-explain-the-anomaly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/september-2026-atlantic-remains-hurricane-free-as-scientists-explain-the-anomaly\/","title":{"rendered":"September 2026: Atlantic Remains Hurricane-Free as Scientists Explain the Anomaly"},"content":{"rendered":"

By mid-September, the Atlantic would normally teem with threatening tropical systems. Yet in 2026, no hurricane has formed yet. This spectacular calm masks a peculiar standoff between a warm ocean and an atmosphere that has grown decidedly hostile to cyclones.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Five storms, no hurricanes: the Atlantic is experiencing an almost unreal start to the season<\/h2>\n

Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, and Edouard did indeed liven up weather maps. But none of these five tropical storms surpassed the hurricane threshold, defined as sustained winds of 119 km\/h. A remarkable situation given that September precisely marks the period when cyclone activity usually peaks.<\/p>\n

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The figures from the National Hurricane Center quantify the anomaly. By September 18, the ACE index, which sums the energy released by cyclones, stood at only 4.4. That is roughly 94% below the normal observed on this date during the 1991-2020 climate baseline.<\/p>\n

The ocean is warm enough to fuel monsters, but something is cutting them off aloft<\/h2>\n

The paradox is striking. Cyclones draw their energy from the warm waters of the tropics, and the Atlantic isn\u2019t lacking in heat. Yet a hospitable sea is not enough. For a hurricane to form, the atmosphere must also allow the immense thunderstorm towers to organize without being continually distorted.<\/p>\n

This is precisely where 2026 changes the rules. A strong vertical wind shear traverses part of the Atlantic basin. In other words, wind speed and sometimes direction vary sharply with height. The storms are then misaligned, their circulation becomes disorganized, and the cyclone\u2019s engine struggles to start.<\/p>\n

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NOAA had already revised its forecasts in August. The agency estimated a 75% probability of a season less active than normal, with only 2 to 6 hurricanes expected over the course of the season. A scenario that seemed prudent in spring and now appears far less theoretical.<\/p>\n

Thousands of miles away in the Pacific, El Ni\u00f1o muddies the Atlantic\u2019s outlook<\/h2>\n

The main suspect, however, lies in another ocean. El Ni\u00f1o has strengthened markedly in the equatorial Pacific in 2026. This periodic warming upsets the large-scale motions of the atmosphere, and its effects travel thousands of kilometers, all the way to the regions where Atlantic hurricanes typically form.<\/p>\n

According to NOAA\u2019s Climate Prediction Center, the episode could become very intense during autumn. In the tropical Atlantic, El Ni\u00f1o tends to amplify the upper-level winds that shear storm systems. It\u2019s like trying to build a tower while an invisible hand keeps pushing the upper floors to the side.<\/p>\n

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This mechanism explains why a warm Atlantic can stay remarkably calm. It also underscores that a cyclone is never the product of a single ingredient. Ocean temperature, humidity, air stability, winds, and tropical circulation must align nearly perfectly to transform a mere disturbance into a true hurricane.<\/p>\n

This spectacular silence does not mean the 2026 season is finished<\/h2>\n

The trap now would be to confuse prolonged calm with a lack of danger. The Atlantic season officially runs through November 30, and a few weeks suffice to completely alter its tally. The National Hurricane Center reiterated on September 19 that no active tropical cyclone was present in the basin.<\/p>\n

History provides a famous warning as well. In 1992, the season began with notable quiet before the arrival of Hurricane Andrew, which became one of the most destructive cyclones in American history. A season that is generally calm can thus conceal an exceptional event, and the two observations are not inherently contradictory.<\/p>\n

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For climate scientists, 2026 already constitutes a real-world laboratory. El Ni\u00f1o demonstrates how much energy the atmosphere can temporarily harbor in the presence of ocean warming. The most intriguing question now remains: will this atmospheric lock hold until November, or will the Atlantic eventually remind us forcefully of what it is capable of?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1140,1702,2416,2415,2231,294,2414],"class_list":["post-3477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-anomaly","tag-atlantic","tag-explain","tag-hurricanefree","tag-remains","tag-scientists","tag-september","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3479,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477\/revisions\/3479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}