Phil Klotzbach, along with his team of scientists and researchers at Colorado State University, has released an updated Atlantic hurricane season forecast for the 43rd consecutive year.
The June 10 forecast signals even less Atlantic hurricane activity than the researchers’ earlier predictions. The forecast now calls for up to 11 named storms, of which five could strengthen into hurricanes, and two could become major hurricanes. If this forecast materializes, it would result in a significantly less active-than-normal season, with hurricane activity expected to be 40% below the long-term average.
CSU’s first forecast for the 2026 season, released on April 9, called for a below-average season with up to 13 named storms, of which six could become hurricanes and two could become major hurricanes. The main driver of this below-average forecast is the likelihood of El Niño developing.
The primary reason remains El Niño. This phenomenon is now officially in place as of Thursday, June 11, and it is expected to strengthen during the season, perhaps toward historic levels (see below). El Niño produces higher-than-average vertical wind shear in the tropical Atlantic, which can prevent tropical cyclones from forming or intensifying.
Experts at Colorado State University, like those at the National Hurricane Center, continue to emphasize that even a less active season can produce dangerous landfalling storms. CSU also released its probabilities of a major hurricane making landfall in the United States and the Caribbean in 2026:
- Entire U.S. coastline: 24% (historical average: 43%)
- U.S. East Coast (including the Florida Peninsula): 11% (historical average: 21%)
- Gulf Coast: 14% (historical average: 27%)
- Caribbean: 26% (historical average: 47%)
“Our analog seasons all had below-average Atlantic hurricane activity,” Klotzbach said. “The relative lack of activity in our analog seasons increases our confidence in a below-normal 2026 Atlantic hurricane season.”
Analog years with a similar El Niño pattern include 1957, 1965, 1987, 1997, 2009, and 2015, all of which experienced below-average Atlantic hurricane activity. The team estimates that 2026 activity will be roughly 60% of an average season. For comparison, the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season, one of the analog years, reached about 66% of its historical median activity.
The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season was slightly above average, reaching 105% of normal activity, as measured by accumulated cyclone energy (ACE). It was one of several recent seasons boosted by the presence of La Niña. Last year, the most notable storm was Category 5 Hurricane Melissa, which wreaked havoc across Jamaica and parts of Cuba, causing approximately $12 billion in damage and 93 fatalities throughout the Caribbean.
While El Niño tends to suppress tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic, the Eastern and Central Pacific typically become much more active. For comparison, the 2015 Eastern Pacific hurricane season reached nearly 200% of its average activity, producing 18 named storms, of which 13 became hurricanes, and nine became major hurricanes.
NOAA: El Niño officially arrives and could be historically strong
On June 11, the NOAA/NWS Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño Advisory, which marks the first time in about two years that El Niño conditions are in place. The most dramatic change since the center’s May outlook was in the sharply upgraded likelihood that this El Niño will be a top-tier event (Fig. 3). The odds of the current El Niño reaching the “very strong” level – the highest official category – have jumped from 37% to 63% since last month.
Often referred to loosely in the media as a “super El Niño,” the “very strong” level corresponds to sea surface temperatures for the Niño 3.4 region of the eastern tropical Pacific running at least 2 degrees Celsius warmer than seasonal norms when averaged for a three-month period. The Niño 3.4 region has already warmed sharply over the last few months.
Sea surface temperatures are already surging to record high levels for this time of year in key El Niño monitoring areas.➡️ Sign up for our next monthly state of the climate webinar to learn more: climatecentral-org.zoom.us/webinar/regi…. We'll also be talking about the hurricane season outlook.
The broad region of rising air over a warm Niño 3.4 region helps produce a checkerboard of rising and sinking air and altered upper-level shear patterns that can extend across much of the globe. This array of atmospheric reverberations, or teleconnections, affects not only hurricanes and typhoons but regions of drought and unusually heavy rainfall throughout much of the tropics and into the midlatitudes of North America. As pointed out by NOAA, “Even very strong El Niño events do not lead to the expected impact everywhere, but stronger events can more significantly tilt the odds in favor of expected outcomes.”
El Niño events tend to arrive in northern summer and autumn and weaken during the next northern spring, so El Niño’s main influence on hurricane season is during the year of onset. In NOAA data going back to 1950, only a few El Niño events have reached the “very strong” level. Using the newly adopted Relative Oceanic Niño Index, El Niño events peaking at very strong levels include 1965–66, 1972–73, 1982–83, 1991–92, 1997–98, and 2015–16. Three of these onset years (1965, 1997, and 2015) are among the analog years chosen by CSU for the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season.
Jeff Masters contributed to this post.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/06/el-nino-is-officially-here-raising-confidence-in-a-quiet-2026-atlantic-hurricane-season/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://yaleclimateconnections.org”>Yale Climate Connections</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/yaleclimateconnections.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ycc-favicon.png?resize=100%2C100&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
<img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https://yaleclimateconnections.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=139459&ga4=1401ERFF5Q” style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/06/el-nino-is-officially-here-raising-confidence-in-a-quiet-2026-atlantic-hurricane-season/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } </script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”//cdn.parsely.com/keys/yaleclimateconnections.org/p.js”></script>
