Atlantic Hurricane Season Is Off to Its Quietest Start in 60 Years

The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season has produced its least active start in at least six decades, with five named tropical storms and not a single hurricane through the first week of September. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center indicate no tropical cyclone formation is expected across the North Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea, or the Gulf over the coming seven days.

The lull arrives at what is normally the busiest point on the calendar. Climatologically, Atlantic activity peaks around September 10, and a typical season has produced multiple hurricanes by this date. That 2026 has produced none is the statistic that has drawn attention from meteorologists tracking the basin.

Florida officials have been careful not to treat the quiet as a conclusion. Governor Ron DeSantis declared September as Florida Preparedness Month, with the state urging residents to confirm their evacuation zone, build a disaster plan, and assemble an emergency kit. The season runs through November 30, and Florida has been struck by significant storms in October more than once.

What the numbers show

NOAA's updated seasonal outlook called for 7 to 13 named storms, of which 2 to 6 could become hurricanes, including 0 to 2 major hurricanes at Category 3 strength or higher. The agency assigned a 75% probability to below-normal activity, a forecast it has maintained through its in-season update.

With five named storms on the books, the season sits within the lower half of that range for total storms. The hurricane count is the outlier. Producing zero hurricanes by the second week of September is unusual even in a below-normal year, because the peak-season environment normally allows at least some storms to intensify past tropical storm strength.

Forecasters have pointed to an intensifying El Nino as a central factor. El Nino conditions in the equatorial Pacific tend to increase vertical wind shear over the tropical Atlantic, and wind shear disrupts the vertical structure a tropical cyclone needs to organize and strengthen. Storms form, encounter shear, and either weaken or fail to develop further.

Why a quiet season is not a safe season

The most important thing about Atlantic hurricane statistics is that they describe the basin, not any individual coastline. A season with fewer storms can still produce a landfall, and a landfalling storm does not care what the seasonal total was.

Florida's history illustrates the point repeatedly. Devastating storms have occurred in seasons that finished below the long-term average, and quiet seasons have ended with a late-October system that reorganized in the Gulf or the western Caribbean and made landfall within days of formation.

The second half of the season also shifts geographically. Early-season storms often form off Africa and travel a long path across the Atlantic, giving days of warning. Late-season development is more likely to occur in the western Caribbean and the Gulf, closer to Florida, which compresses the time between formation and impact.

The rest of the season

Roughly a third of Atlantic tropical activity historically occurs after September 10. October, in particular, is an active month for the western Caribbean and the Gulf, where sea surface temperatures remain warm long after the deep tropics have cooled.

El Nino's suppression of Atlantic activity is real but not absolute. It raises average wind shear across the basin, which lowers the odds of any given disturbance developing, but it does not create a uniform barrier. Pockets of low shear occur, and a disturbance that finds one over warm water can organize quickly.

Forecasters generally advise treating the seasonal outlook as a statement about probability rather than a schedule. The outlook is useful for emergency managers planning resource allocation across a whole season. It provides essentially no information about whether a particular county will face a storm in a particular week.

Preparedness Month in Florida

The state's Preparedness Month designation is built around a small number of concrete actions rather than general awareness. The most consequential is knowing your evacuation zone, which is a specific designation assigned to an address by the county emergency management office and which has nothing to do with flood insurance zones.

Evacuation zones are lettered, and county orders are issued zone by zone. An evacuation order for Zone A in a coastal county does not apply to residents in Zone C. Confusing the two is one of the most common sources of both unnecessary evacuation, which clogs roads, and dangerous non-evacuation, which puts people in storm surge.

The other core recommendations are familiar because they work: a supply kit with water, non-perishable food, medications, and documents; a written plan that identifies where the household will go and how members will reach one another; and attention to insurance coverage, particularly flood coverage, which is not included in standard homeowners policies and which carries a waiting period before it takes effect.

The insurance timing problem

That waiting period deserves emphasis in a quiet season. Flood policies written through the National Flood Insurance Program generally do not take effect for 30 days after purchase. A homeowner who buys coverage when a storm appears on a forecast map is buying coverage for a future storm, not the one approaching.

Florida has more flood policies in force than any other state, and a substantial share of Florida flood damage occurs outside high-risk mapped zones. Inland freshwater flooding from rainfall has produced major losses in counties far from any coastline.

A quiet stretch is, in practical terms, the best time to address coverage gaps, because the waiting period runs during a period of low risk rather than during an active threat. Emergency managers have consistently made this argument, and it is one of the more actionable pieces of advice in any preparedness campaign.

What emergency managers are doing

The Florida Division of Emergency Management and its county counterparts do not scale back during quiet periods. Staging contracts, shelter agreements, debris removal arrangements, and mutual aid compacts all have to be in place before a storm, and a slow season is when that work gets done properly.

Counties also use quiet periods for exercises. Tabletop drills that walk through evacuation decisions, shelter openings, and post-storm assessment are considerably more useful when they are not being run in parallel with an actual event.

For residents, the equivalent is checking the things that are easy to check when nothing is happening: whether the generator starts, whether shutters fit, whether the household's documents are in one accessible place, and whether the person who would need help evacuating has a plan for how that happens.

What El Nino does to the Atlantic

The relationship between the equatorial Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity is one of the more robust findings in seasonal forecasting, and it operates through atmospheric circulation rather than through anything happening in the Atlantic itself.

During El Nino conditions, warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific shift the region of most intense tropical convection eastward. That shift alters the upper-level wind pattern across the tropics, and one downstream consequence is increased westerly wind flow aloft over the tropical Atlantic.

Tropical cyclones require a relatively uniform wind profile through the depth of the atmosphere in order to organize. When upper-level winds move in a substantially different direction or speed than surface winds, the developing circulation is tilted and its heat engine is disrupted. Storms that would otherwise intensify instead struggle to maintain structure.

The effect is statistical rather than absolute. El Nino seasons produce fewer Atlantic hurricanes on average, and some El Nino seasons have still produced damaging landfalls. The 1992 season, which produced Hurricane Andrew, occurred during El Nino conditions and delivered one of the most destructive storms in Florida history.

What Florida has learned from quiet years

Emergency managers have a specific concern about quiet seasons that has nothing to do with meteorology. Consecutive years without a significant storm erode public preparedness in measurable ways.

Supply kits are consumed and not replaced. Generators sit unused and fail when needed. New residents arrive in Florida during quiet years and never experience the drill of tracking a storm, deciding whether to evacuate, and living without power for a week.

Florida's population growth makes this a compounding problem. Hundreds of thousands of people move to the state annually, and a substantial share of them have never been through a hurricane. A quiet stretch means an increasing fraction of the state's residents have no direct experience with what a major landfall requires.

That is the reason state and county emergency management agencies run preparedness campaigns most aggressively during quiet periods rather than during active ones. Once a storm is on a forecast map, the window for meaningful preparation has largely closed, and the messaging shifts from preparation to evacuation.

Where the risk shifts late in the season

The geography of Atlantic development changes as the season progresses, and Floridians who track only the deep tropics can miss the systems that matter most to them.

Early and peak season storms frequently originate from tropical waves moving off the African coast, travel westward across the Atlantic over a week or more, and give forecasters days of lead time. Those are the storms that produce the familiar cone graphics stretching across the ocean.

Late season development is different. It tends to occur in the western Caribbean and the Gulf, in areas where water remains warm and where an upper-level disturbance interacting with a surface trough can spin up a system quickly. Storms forming there can reach Florida within two or three days of being named.

That compressed timeline changes what preparation means. A household with a plan already in place can execute it. A household starting from nothing when a storm is named in the western Caribbean is competing with everyone else for plywood, water, and fuel.

What's next

The National Hurricane Center issues tropical weather outlooks every six hours during the season and updates them more frequently when systems are active. Those outlooks, published at the agency's website, are the authoritative source for what is actually happening in the basin.

Residents should also understand the difference between the two terms that matter most during an event. A tropical storm or hurricane watch means conditions are possible in the specified area, generally within 48 hours. A warning means conditions are expected, generally within 36 hours. A warning is the point at which preparations should already be complete.

The season ends November 30. Between now and then, the basin's below-normal forecast means the odds favor continued quiet, and the historical record means those odds are not a guarantee. Florida's emergency managers are planning for both.