No Atlantic Hurricanes By Midseason: Quietest Start Since 1914
So much for the massively-hyped ‘Godzilla’ El Nino we were told we would get this year. In fact, it has produced exactly the opposite effect, stopping any Atlantic hurricanes forming so far
For the first time in 112 years, the Atlantic Ocean has made it past the midway point of hurricane season without seeing a single hurricane.
The National Hurricane Center has tracked six named storms so far in the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of America, but none have evolved beyond tropical storms.
As of Sept. 22, Tropical Storm Fay is the Atlantic’s only active named storm, last tagged 645 miles southwest of the Azores; the National Hurricane Center announced it was weakening into a tropical depression, which keeps the hurricane-less streak going.
This is the first time the Atlantic hurricane season has been this quiet since 1914, according to meteorologists—one of two years to pass without a single hurricane since records began in 1851.
The other year was 1907. It is also the quietest start of a season since the era of weather satellites began in 1966.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration updated its outlook for the season on Aug. 6, predicting a 75 percent chance of below-normal activity that would feature a total of seven to 13 named storms, two to six of which would evolve into hurricanes and a maximum of two becoming major hurricanes (Category 3 to Category 5).
Credit for the anticipated quiet season was given to the global phenomenon El Niño, which has also been unusually active [in] the eastern Pacific.
NOAA explained that El Niño increases wind shear over the Atlantic, making the environment far less conducive to hurricane development, and this year it has been incredibly active.
How has the mainstream media responded to this good news? Almost total silence.
See more here climatechangedispatch
sunsettommy
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The 2023 Hurricane season was very busy despite a moderate to strong El-Nino phase in process.
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Harley Foster
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dfsdf
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Jim
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Both the Super El Niño and Super El Padre shown in the image at the top of this article are generated by extremely high temperature fluids and gases emitted from ocean floor geological features at their Origin Points. This invalidates contentions by those stating anthropogenic forces are destroying many aspects of our planet: Coral Bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, changes in marine animal migration patterns, alteration of weather patterns across the planet etc.
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Herb Rose
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A far more plausible explanation for the lack of hurricanes is the giant sandstorms from Africa. The sand would absorb heat preventing the ocean water from gaining enough energy to create the hurricanes. Makes far more sense the currents in the pacific some how interfering with the energy off the west coast of Africa.
Because people don’t understand el Nino it gives them an answer to hide their ignorance with existing ignorance.
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James McGinn
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Moist–Dry Windshear Boundaries and the Development of Large Storms
The core idea
A storm does not produce its own energy. The energetic low pressure that drives a storm comes from the jet stream. It reaches the storm’s location through lateral vortices, which you can picture as tornadoes turned on their sides. These vortices act as conduits: they carry low pressure from the jet stream to the place where the storm develops.
To understand why storms form, and why they sometimes don’t, we need to understand where these conduits come from.
Where the conduits come from
The conduits form along moist–dry windshear boundaries. These are surfaces in the atmosphere where warmer, moister air lies beneath colder, drier air moving at a different speed or direction.
At these boundaries, windshear amplifies the surface tension of H₂O. That amplified surface tension gives the lateral vortices their structural integrity, which is what allows them to hold together and act as conduits.
The most important boundaries are high in the troposphere, near the tropopause.
What determines storm size
The size a storm can reach depends on the quality of the boundary it draws on. Three properties matter:
Extent: how much horizontal area the boundary covers
Continuity: whether it is unbroken
Flatness: how level and even it is
A large, continuous, flat boundary provides a large surface for surface tension to be amplified, and can support larger conduits and larger storms. A boundary that is uneven, fragmented, or interrupted supports less.
Why calm comes before the storm
These boundaries form and persist when the atmosphere is calm. Turbulence breaks them up.
This gives “the calm before the storm” a specific physical meaning. A long period of undisturbed conditions lets extensive, flat moist–dry boundaries build up, and that sets the stage for large storms, including hurricanes.
The reverse also holds. Anything that disturbs these boundaries limits how large storms can become. Storms themselves are one such source of disturbance.
Example: jet stream position and Gulf hurricanes
Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico tend to occur when the jet stream is tracking far to the north. When the jet stream dips south, closer to the Gulf, the storms it generates bring turbulence into the region. That turbulence breaks up the moist–dry boundaries over the Gulf, and fewer hurricanes develop.
A possible human factor: wind farms
Wind farms generate turbulence. If that turbulence can reach or otherwise disturb these boundaries, it could help explain an apparent decline in severe weather in the U.S. over the past decade, a period in which wind farms have become far more common. This is a hypothesis that would need testing.
Why the conventional view falls short
Mainstream meteorology explains storms through convection, latent heat of condensation, and capping by dry layers. In this view, those explanations are too vague and unscientific to account for how storms are structured and powered. The deeper problem lies upstream: physics and chemistry have not yet modeled the structural properties of H₂O surface tension, or how windshear amplifies it. Without that foundation, meteorology has had to rely on less precise models.
James McGinn — solvingtornadoes.com
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James Edward Kamis
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The figure at the top of this article was taken from my article posted on the Climate Change Dispatch website September 2026 entitled “How Undersea Geological Activity Could Influence El Niño”. It theorizes that a look a like El Niño geological feature, termed El Padre is generated by emissions of ocean floor superheated fluids and gases. This is the same process that I theorize generates all El Niños.
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James McGinn
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My observations for what it is worth:
El Padre seems to track along the same latitude as the northern, midlatitude Jetstream. El nino tracks equator. They are both lateral, west to east or west to east (el nino). But oceanic ridges tend to track more north to south. As a geologists I’m sure you realize this.
Surface currents are powered by prevailing winds.
I am the author of:
The ‘Missing Link’ of Meteorology’s Theory of Storms
Thunderbolts Forum
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
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Jerry Krause
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Hi James,
Thank you for these comments. I will try to digest them.
Have a good day. Jerry
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