Tropical Trouble as #Hurricane season begins? Here’s the season outlook w/ a Super El Niño!

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]The National Weather Service just came out with its hurricane season outlook and the timing is impeccable because our computer model starting to hint at maybe something at the end of May and the beginning of June. Hey everybody, I'm chief meteorologist and climate specialist Jeff Berardelli. First, I want to address the elephant in the room. That's our American model, the GFS model, forecasting maybe some type of hurricane in the Gulf in about uh 10 days. That seems extraordinarily unlikely. It's a known bias of that model. I wouldn't pay much attention to that, but I would pay attention to the overall pattern of an upper-level low across the Gulf and lots of moisture being dug out of the deep tropics and pushed towards Florida in the 8-to-12-day stretch, which means a lot of heavy downpours, which is good for the drought. And if it hangs around long enough, there is some chance it could become slightly more than that, and we'll keep you updated on that. All right, so let's dig into the forecast from NOAA, and they're forecasting 8 to 14 named storms. The average is 14, so that's well below normal. And then in terms of hurricanes, they're forecasting three to six. The average is seven. So, why are they forecasting a below-average season? We've been talking about this now for months, and it's because El Niño is forming and it's forming at a record pace, and it's going to be one of the strongest on record. Look at the change from January to May. Water temperatures have jumped in the El Niño region of the Pacific by 3° C, about 5 and 1/2° F.

[00:01:23]That is extraordinarily fast. Why does that matter? Warm water in the eastern Pacific outcompetes and overpowers the Caribbean and the western part of the Atlantic. Now, it's relatively cool, not actually cool, it's still hot in the Caribbean, but the warmer water in the Pacific causes rising air. What goes up must come down, and it crushes clouds in the Atlantic and especially in the Caribbean, so it ends up being dry there. That convection, those thunderstorms from the rising air in the eastern Pacific, also causes a lot of wind shear tearing systems apart in the Atlantic. What I did was I looked at the five strongest La Niñas, five strongest El Niños on top La Niña, on the bottom El Niño. You can clearly see a lot more lines and a lot more storms during those La Niña years.

[00:02:09]And on the bottom those El Niño years, well, not quite as many storms, especially close to home. A zoomed-in view really shows us. On the bottom the strong El Niño years, almost nothing in the Gulf, very little, very little in the Caribbean. And when you compare major hurricanes during the five strongest La Niña years, 18 major hurricanes. During the five strongest El Niño years, only seven. So, it makes a really big difference when it comes to hurricanes and especially major hurricanes. Now, the European model seasonal forecast for peak season forecasting below average, well below average conditions across most of the Atlantic and also in the Caribbean. The one place where there's likely going to be a I would say a better chance for formation is going to be the subtropics, which are record warm right now. And also maybe close to home, close to the Gulf Coast, close to the Southeast Coast. So, even though it may be a below average season, we may see these close to home.