Traditionally, this week is the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, the busiest time of year for storms to spin up and barrel west into North America.<\/p>\n
Instead, nearly four months into the season, and with two more to go, not a single hurricane has formed, a drought not seen in more than eight decades.<\/p>\n
While the inactivity is unusual, meteorologists said it is explainable \u2014 and they warned against confusing a quiet start with a quiet finish.<\/p>\n
Not since 1941 has the Atlantic gone this far into a season without a hurricane. There have been five systems that grew strong enough to become named tropical storms, but none had the time or the right conditions to intensify into hurricanes.<\/p>\n
In May, forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted a below-normal season<\/a> with three to six hurricanes, because of the gathering intensity of the El Ni\u00f1o weather pattern. But the absence of any hurricanes at all has caught experts off guard.<\/p>\n \u201cThis lack of activity is still surprising,\u201d said Lindsey Long, a meteorologist with the NOAA unit that issues seasonal forecasts. \u201cWe have just hit the peak of the season, which occurs on Sept. 10, and it has been a very quiet week. but there is still a lot of time for a hurricane to form.\u201d<\/p>\n The primary reason has indeed been El Ni\u00f1o. The weather pattern has unleashed dramatic storm activity in the Pacific, including two hurricanes that wreaked havoc on Hawaii, but it historically has acted as a dampener in the Atlantic.<\/p>\n Storm systems need certain conditions in place in order to become hurricanes, and El Ni\u00f1o tends to rob the Atlantic of at least some of them.<\/p>\n This summer, a strong vertical wind shear \u2014 the changing of wind speed and direction with height \u2014 across the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean has ripped many potential storms apart before they can become hurricanes. It\u2019s almost like a protective shield around North America, destroying storms before they can get close.<\/p>\n Yet that protective shield creates a danger, warned Jamie Rhome, the deputy director of the National Hurricane Center.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s quiet season comes after one that was unusual in other ways: 2025 had five hurricanes, including Melissa, which slammed into Jamaica after becoming one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded<\/a>. But none hit the mainland United States, which hasn\u2019t recorded a hurricane making landfall<\/a> in nearly two years.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t let the public think that means that their risk is necessarily lessened,\u201d Mr. Rhome said.<\/p>\n Hurricanes that do form during El Ni\u00f1o years tend to develop quickly and close to land, in the Gulf of Mexico or just off the East Coast, rather than taking days to move across the open ocean. Mr. Rhome pointed to Tropical Storm Edouard<\/a>, which nearly reached hurricane strength before it ran into the Louisiana and Texas coasts this month.<\/p>\n Which is why hurricane experts say the season isn\u2019t over until it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n Tiny \u201ccracks\u201d can open in the wind shear, allowing a system to escalate rapidly with little lead time. That\u2019s what happened with Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which flattened homes across Florida and left an estimated 50,000 people homeless<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even with advancements in computer modeling, forecasters struggle to pinpoint when those fleeting windows of optimal weather will occur.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re talking about a tipping point between a system that can develop and develop quick, and a nothing burger,\u201d Mr. Rhome said. \u201cThe systems that do form can ramp up really quickly close to land, without the traditional lead times.\u201d<\/p>\n Philip Klotzbach, a hurricane expert at Colorado State University, noted that only four Atlantic seasons on record have ended with one or zero hurricanes: 1905 and 1926 had one; 1907 and 1914 had none. The first and only hurricane of 1905 formed on Oct. 8; in 1941, the first arrived on Sept. 21.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, I think it\u2019s way too early to say that we\u2019re going to have zero, or even one, hurricane this season,\u201d Mr. Klotzbach said.<\/p>\n