09/14/2026
9/14/26 🐘
So, the "elephant in the room" is El Niño's strength. Further warming is projected the next few months to potentially "historic" levels. This strong wording was recently messaged by NOAA, as it is hard to ignore the strong signal in the observational data (figure below).
We hope this post provides some objective perspective of what these trends could (key word) mean for us through at least the end of 2026, while tempering the internet sensationalism/hype.
As a review, El Niño is a recurring event characterized by warmer-than-normal sea-surface temperatures in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific Ocean. The "cool counterpart" is La Niña, while closer to normal conditions is called ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) neutral. Many decades of tracking this phenomenon have given us a solid understanding of the impacts on Hurricane Season and global weather. Every El Niño/La Niña event is different in terms of onset, strength, duration, and impacts.
This current El Niño event is poised to be very strong and persist through this winter. Bottom line, the chances of experiencing impacts consistent with El Niño are larger, though not guaranteed (another key word). For us, we are likely looking at:
1) Atlantic Hurricane Season remaining tame 🌀📉
2) Wetter/cooler than normal winter 🌧️📈🌡️📉
Learn more at: https://noaa.gov/understanding-el-nino
