How El Niño Could Influence Where Hurricanes Go This Season

A developing El Niño may have some influence where hurricanes track in 2023, if recent hurricane seasons are any guide.

We’ve previously laid out how this developing El Niño could impact the season’s statistics such as the number of named storms and hurricanes.

While it’s just one ingredient to consider in how active a season may be, it turns out El Niño can also help set up weather patterns that determine where hurricanes go.

To shed some insight on this, we examined six recent years during which an El Niño was either in place or had developed during a hurricane season.

Below is a track map of all 27 hurricanes during those six El Niño hurricane seasons since 1997. The segments in red and purple show when each was a hurricane and Category 3 or stronger hurricane, respectively.

There are three main takeaways.

1. Almost all eastern and central Atlantic hurricanes curled away from the U.S. Notice all the tracks that moved westward, then north, then northeast in clockwise fashion away from the East Coast.

That’s because the Bermuda high, which acts as a giant steering wheel for tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin, tends to be weaker and less expansive during El Niños, forecasters at Atmospheric G2 that create The Weather Company’s hurricane outlook noted.

The AG2 team also noted El Niño hurricane seasons have persistent areas of low pressure well above the surface over the Southeast U.S.

The combination of these features tends to grab a hurricane approaching from the east and turn it away from the East Coast, what meteorologists refer to as "recurving".

2. The Caribbean Sea is mostly quieter. The earlier map above shows a few tracks in the Caribbean Sea during recent El Niños, but not many as hurricanes, particularly over the eastern two-thirds of the Caribbean Sea.

El Niño usually sets up a pattern of strong westerly winds aloft and sinking air over the Caribbean Sea. Riding over the typical easterly winds near the surface, this increased wind shear is hostile for development of tropical storms and hurricanes, or those that move into this environment.

One of those recent El Niño season hurricanes, Danny, was a Category 3 hurricane east of the Windward Islands in late August 2015. But then it hit a wall of wind shear and was ripped to shreds as it arrived in the Leeward Islands.

3. But some hurricane strikes can still happen. El Niño may act to suppress numbers of storms and hurricanes, but as we have often said, it only takes one hurricane to make it a destructive season.

In 2018, El Niño didn’t develop as soon as expected, and ended up weak.

That season produced two hurricanes so destructive their names were retired from future use.

Less than a month later, Hurricane Michael became one of only four hurricanes of record that made a Category 5 landfall in the U.S., when it roared into the Florida Panhandle.

This El Niño could be stronger. Does that change this picture? As of mid-May, an increasing number of computer model forecasts hinted this El Niño could be strong by the heart of hurricane season.

Below is the same map of hurricane tracks plotted earlier, but we removed the two hurricane seasons in which El Niño was weak.

First, you’ll notice the number of hurricane tracks are fewer. There were only 14 of them in those four seasons, combined.

None of those reached the East Coast as hurricanes. There were a few Gulf hurricanes, though, including Lili striking Louisiana in 2002, Danny briefly a Category 1 hurricane in 1997 and Ida which spun down quickly as it neared the northern Gulf Coast in November 2009.

While these past years can give a little perspective on what might happen in 2023, there are some key things to keep in mind.

-The Atlantic Ocean is much warmer than average in most areas. If that persists, it typically indicates a more, not less, active season ahead. The Atmospheric G2 forecast team said this combination of El Niño and very warm Atlantic Ocean water was unprecedented in recent record, adding to the uncertain forecast.

-As in investing, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Every hurricane season is different in its own way.

-Prepare for every hurricane season as if this is the year a hurricane strikes, regardless of seasonal forecasts and El Niño.

M​ORE ON WEATHER.COM:

2023 Atlantic Hurricane Season More Unpredictable Than Usual, Outlook Shows

C​hanges You'll See In Hurricane Forecasts This Season

W​hen The Last 'Quiet' Hurricane Season Happened

F​acts About Each Of The 2023 Atlantic Hurricane Season Names

2​022 Hurricane Season Recap: Florida's Luck Ran Out

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been an incurable weather geek since a tornado narrowly missed his childhood home in Wisconsin at age 7. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.