Why forecasters predict below-normal Atlantic hurricane season

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Atlantic hurricane season's officially here and it is expected to be quieter than usual. Forecasters with the National Hurricane Center say there's a 55% chance of a below average season.

[00:00:10]They're predicting 8 to 14 named storms, 3 to 6 hurricanes, and 1 to 3 major hurricanes. CBS News New York chief weather caster Lonnie Quinn joins us now. So why are there fewer predicted Atlantic hurricanes right now and what does that mean for the region?

[00:00:26]>> Okay, let's start with the Atlantic. All right, so here's the deal. It all comes down to when we talk about El Niño, it all comes down to the water off the coast of Peru. If that water is running warmer than normal, you have the setup for El Niño. So now the question is, okay, what is El Niño? How does it affect hurricane formations? If this water is warm, Lindsey, it's going to heat the air right above it. So that air is going to do what? It's going to rise, right? It's warmer now, so it rises. It doesn't rise all up to space, it basically hits the troposphere around say 55,000 ft and then it curves. Now it starts flowing from the west to the east and as it does so, think about this, hurricanes are basically moving during their formations from the east to the west. So they're moving the opposite direction. A hurricane is basically like it's like a bunch of blocks that a kid would play with. The bigger and taller that hurricane, the stronger it is. So you put one block on top of the other, eventually, all right, if it's hitting this wind shear, you can't put those top blocks on, it sort of spills the hurricane over, all the heat escapes and just sort of fades away. So that is like the real simple explanation of what El Niño is. But remember this, you don't have to have an El Niño season to have devastation out there. Best example I can give you, my family survived this in South Florida. It was 1992.

[00:01:38]All right, in 1992, Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida. That was the end of August. So we're just kicking it off now. They didn't even have their first name until the end of August. That was a category 5 and you know what, at the time that Hurricane Andrew hit, it was classified as a cat 4. We didn't classify it until until years later because it was the whole hurricane center actually got destroyed by Andrew and then got bumped up to a category five when we looked at damage and assessed it later on but initially it was a cat four.

[00:02:03]>> Incredible. I love that you've reduced it to children's terms. I'm glad my team sent you my memo for my expectations.

[00:02:08][laughter] Let's talk about the West Coast.

[00:02:09]>> Well, basically where you have the wind shear in the eastern in the Pacific and the Atlantic excuse me, you're going to have a lack of wind shear in the Pacific and you still need warm water but we don't have that that headwind that beats up a hurricane. Hurricanes hate well, they hate cold water, they hate land and mountainous terrain and they hate that wind shear. We're taking the wind shear out of the situation in the Pacific so where an average season gives them 15 named storms, we're thinking at least that maybe up to 22 and basically the water temperatures are certainly warm enough. Now, I'll say this much. It's not so much the US West Coast line. I mean the California sea surface temperatures right now around Southern California, you know, 48 to 68 degrees.

[00:02:46]The magic number to build the hurricane, you want 79 degree water and that's what we found find more like down around the coast of Mexico, the Baja and that's where I think we'll be sort of the hot spots for this year. Not to say you couldn't get some that moved to the north but I think they would be in a decaying fashion as they hit that colder water.

[00:03:02]>> Such important information. Lanny, you always class up the joint. Thank you for coming.

[00:03:05]>> Thanks for having me.

[00:03:06]>> Thank you.