No Atlantic Hurricane Yet. How Much Credit Does El Niño Get?

The framing that September ended without an Atlantic hurricane is accurate and too small. No Atlantic hurricane has formed in the 2026 season at all, from 1 June through 2 October. September is where the quiet became a record, because it was the month the season passed the previous latest first-hurricane date of the satellite era, 11 September, per press reports citing the 2002 and 2013 seasons. The sharper question is the one this piece tries to answer: how much of that quiet can honestly be credited to El Niño?

The short answer is that El Niño is NOAA's leading forecast explanation for the suppressed season so far, and no source this piece read can say how much of the quiet is its doing. The rest of the piece is the ledger behind that sentence.

What the record shows

NHC's 2026 season table, updated 2 October, lists eight named storms, all tropical storms, with no hurricanes and no major hurricanes. It puts named storms 3 below normal, hurricanes 5 below and major hurricanes 2 below, against normal as the table defines it. Three of the eight, Fay, Gonzalo and Hanna, formed in September. Fay came closest. NHC's advisory of 03:00 UTC on 21 September put it at 60 knots, or 70 mph, and its discussion said a brief hurricane intensification was “possible” before shear and dry air took over. Six hours later NHC had it at 55 knots.

NHC reports intensity in 5-knot steps, so the gap between Fay and a hurricane was one reporting step: 60 knots (70 mph) against 65 knots (75 mph). That is close, but it is not a hurricane in the operational record. That record remains subject to NHC's post-season review, which can revise a storm's peak intensity. If Fay were upgraded, “no hurricane all year” would no longer be true. This piece uses the operational table and treats an upgrade as an open possibility, not a prediction.

What is and is not a record yet

Press reports describe the season as the first in the satellite era, which began in 1966, to pass 11 September without a hurricane, breaking the earlier marks set by Gustav in 2002 and Humberto in 2013. NWS Tallahassee's September 2026 newsletter gives 8 October 1905 as the latest first hurricane on record, so a first hurricane after 8 October would set a new all-time latest date. It says 2026 could join 1907 and 1914 as the only seasons, in records that reliably date back to 1851, with no hurricanes.

Two cautions apply. The 1907 and 1914 comparisons rest on a pre-satellite record, so they are not like for like with a season watched by satellites. And the season runs to 30 November, so nothing here is a final record yet. A hurricane in October or November would end the “no hurricane” claim without changing what happened in the months before it.

What NOAA expected, and why

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center updated its Atlantic outlook on 6 August 2026 to 7 to 13 named storms, 2 to 6 hurricanes and 0 to 2 major hurricanes, with a 75% chance of a below-normal season, 20% near-normal and 5% above-normal. Its reasoning is not four independent causes. It rests on El Niño persisting and intensifying, with a 90% chance of a strong or very strong event, and on the way that event was expected to diminish the trade wind and wind shear reductions that the warm, high-activity-era Atlantic would otherwise supply. A West African monsoon with rainfall shifted north and inland, a configuration NOAA calls not optimal for development, is the separate third item.

The outlook's discussion adds context. Models predicted above-normal vertical wind shear over the Main Development Region for August to October. Sea surface temperatures there were above average, with a June area-averaged anomaly of +0.17°C, which NOAA calls “much lower” than the +1.21°C and +1.20°C of 2023 and 2024. Trade winds were stronger than normal across parts of the region. In NOAA's argument, El Niño and the forecast shear largely overlap, while the Atlantic temperatures, trade winds and monsoon are context. These were conditions forecast in August. This piece has not established how much shear actually occurred across the region.

Against that outlook, eight named storms sits inside the 7 to 13 range, at the low end. Zero hurricanes is below the 2 to 6 range, but the season has two months left, so the hurricane count cannot be scored as a miss yet.

The evidence ledger: how much credit?

• For a large El Niño role. NOAA's outlook lists El Niño first. CSU's Philip Klotzbach, quoted by the Associated Press on 4 September, said the season was “crushing all sorts of shear records.” The same report listed three El Niño-linked suppressors: wind shear, a stable atmosphere and dry air. Fox Weather reported on 25 September that NOAA calls El Niño “the main driving factor”; this piece did not locate that sentence in a NOAA document and cites it as reported.
• What NHC's own text shows. The forecast discussions for Fay, Gonzalo and Hanna each cite wind shear and dry air as the reasons the storms would weaken, and Gonzalo was also moving over cooler water. That confirms shear and dry air were doing the work at the storm scale. It does not attribute the shear to El Niño. Fay and Hanna were at 34 to 37°N. NHC tied Fay's shear to an amplifying upper-level ridge and described Hanna's as strong west-northwesterly shear. NHC's text does not link either to the Pacific, and this piece cannot say how much of that subtropical shear El Niño contributed.
• Against giving El Niño all of it. The 2023 season ran during a strong El Niño and produced 20 named storms, 7 hurricanes and 3 major hurricanes. NOAA's season summary says it was the most named storms of any El Niño-influenced year in the modern record, with record-warm Atlantic water counterbalancing the usual suppression. A published study of that season (Klotzbach and colleagues, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2024) found that August to October shear in the Main Development Region was well below normal despite the strong El Niño. NOAA forecast the opposite for 2026: above-normal shear and a regional temperature anomaly far below 2023's. NHC's season tables for two other strong El Niño years show first hurricanes on 11 July in 1997 and 18 August in 2015. So El Niño years vary, and 2026 is quieter than the strong El Niño years this piece checked, at least so far.
• What scientists say about causes. LAist's 27 September report quotes scientists saying El Niño is not the only factor and that climate change operates in the background, without assigning shares.

Taken together, the ledger supports “El Niño is NOAA's leading forecast explanation, with shear and dry air documented around individual storms” and does not support a percentage. One season cannot separate El Niño's shear from an Atlantic less exceptionally warm than in recent years, a displaced West African monsoon and ordinary chance. The headline’s question has an answer in kind, not in amount.

What this does not mean

• It does not mean the season was harmless. NHC's discussions place Bertha on the northern Gulf Coast on 22 July and Edouard weakening over east-central Texas on 2 September. Our Bertha piece covers why a suppressed season can still make landfall.
• It does not mean the season is over. It runs to 30 November. AccuWeather's lead hurricane expert forecasts zero to two more hurricanes and notes warm waters near the Southeast coast and in the Gulf could still allow rapid intensification near land.
• It does not mean the same thing is happening everywhere. On 2 October NHC's home page showed Hurricane Rachel in the eastern Pacific and Tropical Storm Nolo in the central Pacific while the Atlantic had no active cyclone. Our Pacific-side piece covers that signal.
• It does not measure shear directly. This piece did not read observed shear analyses for the Main Development Region. The shear claims above are NOAA's forecast reasoning, NHC's storm-level text and an expert quote.

What to watch

• NHC's tropical weather outlooks and advisories, and whether a first hurricane forms before or after the 8 October date NWS Tallahassee gives as the all-time latest.
• CPC's ENSO Diagnostic Discussion on 8 October 2026, which updates the El Niño odds this piece relies on.
• NHC's post-season intensity review of Fay and the other storms.
• NOAA's and CSU's end-of-season summaries, which are where any attribution beyond opinion would appear.

“El Niño stopped the hurricanes” is too clean a sentence for a season with eight named storms, two Gulf Coast landfalls and a 70 mph near miss. What the evidence supports is that a strong El Niño, an Atlantic less exceptionally warm than in recent years and persistent shear and dry air lined up, and that the season has so far produced no hurricane. How the credit splits among them is a question the post-season record, not October, will have to answer.