El Niño expected to suppress storm activity, but Gulf Coast residents shouldn't let their guard d...

追加: 2026-06-02

[00:00:01]All right, as we're getting close to the official start of the tropical season of the hurricane season, let's take a look at where we stand with some of the predictions for this year's season and how El Niño may play a role in that.

[00:00:14]That's something you may have heard about. It's certainly a climate phenomenon, a term that is used quite often. You have La Niña, you have El Niño. These are ocean currents that are in the Pacific, but they can have some impact on the tropical season and El Niño could even have a bit of a positive impact. We still could see some systems that do come towards the Gulf Coast. So, let's take a look at the numbers first and this is what we have with the predictions. Now, I did some editing here, uh but the bottom line is that the Colorado State forecast, that's the first set of lines, named storms 13, hurricanes six, major hurricanes two.

[00:00:52]That is a slightly below normal forecast. The NOAA forecast is even lower. Now, the NOAA guys they put out this crazy wide range. And what I did was just pick the midpoint of those ranges because it's kind of hard to grasp what they're saying when there could be eight to 14 storms. Let's go ahead and nail that down for you. 11 is the midpoint of that. So, that would be a lower forecast than Colorado State. A 4.5 would be the number of hurricanes.

[00:01:21]That is lower than Colorado State and lower than the average. And two major hurricanes, that's lower than the normal amount of of three and it's even with the Colorado State forecast.

[00:01:33]The NOAA forecast and the Colorado State forecast are saying about the same thing, maybe a little less activity. The bottom line is it only takes one and you know, you could have a really quiet season, but one storm comes right at us and there's some things to look at here.

[00:01:48]So, where do we stand with this El Niño thing?

[00:01:52]Uh right now, I want to show you a first the way this works. And so, the cause of El Niño is a warm ocean current that is in the Pacific, and I'll bring it up full so you can see it a little better there. And this is a reversal of the winds from what we would typically see. We normally have some cool water upwelling off the coast of South America. We're talking about off of Ecuador and Peru right here. And so, when you have warmer than usual water right here, it creates a low wind shear environment in the Pacific. That means more storms. And in the Caribbean Sea and out over the Atlantic, high wind shear, and that means that things get disrupted and we could see fewer storms.

[00:02:39]But note that it may not have as much of an impact on home-grown systems that could occur in the Gulf of Mexico. All right, looking at water temperatures.

[00:02:49]Where are we now with this possible El Niño? We're already seeing signs that El Niño could be developing.

[00:02:58]And we have warmer than average water off the coast of South America. There's still a little cool pocket off of off of Ecuador, but the bottom line is it is warmer than average. And if we look at the anomalies, this is the same thing as saying warmer than average, right? And right here, off the coast of South America, we have the warm water.

[00:03:21]This is Central America, and then this is the Gulf. So, it's starting to get the look, but it's very, very early, and there are some questions about the El Niño that could impact the tropical season. One of those is when does the El Niño really get going?

[00:03:38]And the predictions here show that it should really get cranked up more in that May, June, July, or July and June, July, and August time frame, that there is a good probability that we'll be in an El Nino pattern. The other question will be how strong of an El Nino is it?

[00:03:59]And a stronger El Nino would mean that maybe we'll have a few less storms. But what we can also see is we can still see June and July storms before the El Nino really ramps up. And how strong will the El Nino be? Well, certainly it doesn't reach reach its peak until the fall. And what it normally means for us is that we'll see a more active fall than normal as far as severe weather fronts and rain.

[00:04:25]And the strongest El Nino is most likely going to occur more into the tail end of the tropical season, October, November, December.

[00:04:34]That's just how El Nino's work. That it's a it's a the water has to warm up first and then you start to see the changes with the overall pattern. And you know, the way the reason why it's important, I mean we're talking about an ocean current that's in the Pacific, but it's the largest body of water on the planet. And so that is really has a big influence on global climate. So we have a high chance that some form of an El Nino will be developing and the the NOAA forecast says only a 10% chance that we would see a lower than average El Nino. We we have about a 55% chance that we're going to see a stronger than average El Nino. And you know, when does it really get going and how strong does it actually be? I we're still working on that. That we kind of got to watch it play out really in real time. But we the forecasts are for a stronger El Nino.

[00:05:27]And the result is, you know, that we're going to see stronger upper level winds.

[00:05:30]But there are a lot of factors that influence what makes a hurricane strong and what makes a hurricane weak. The number one thing that you first think of is water temperature. Then you have to look at atmospheric moisture, upper level winds, and you know, that there are other factors that go into this, right? And and so if we're getting a season where we have, you know, really warm water but the upper level winds are hostile, we'll see fewer storms or where you have lower atmospheric moisture, a lot of dust coming across Africa. There are a lot of different factors, but right now we're thinking that upper level winds may be more of an inhibiting factor on tropical systems coming in the hurricane season. That's why we have that near normal to slightly below normal forecast. And of course a less active season could mean that we're less likely to get a storm, but this is for the entire Atlantic basin.

[00:06:24]Um this is a broad thing. One of the things we've certainly noted is that long-range hurricane forecasting, we've still got a ways to go on that part of the science of meteorology.

[00:06:35]Um but that's where we stand right now rolling into the season. Of course we're going to be all over it here on Fox 10 News whether we see, you know, 10 named storms or we go all the way through the list and get into that the extra list of names. I will continue to watch that here on Fox 10 News and I just wanted to shed some light on El Nino and the predictions for the tropical season in this edition of Next Weather.