Unusually Quiet For Hurricane Season Peak

Typically the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, the basin has instead drifted into a September slumber that could last at least the next several days.

Very Quiet, For Now

The map below shows areas the National Hurricane Center is monitoring for possible tropical development over the next seven days, along with the current satellite image.

On Wednesday morning, typically the peak day of hurricane season, this map was blank.

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By afternoon, an area of interest was circled in the far eastern Atlantic that could slowly develop over the next week.

Peak Of The Season

This is happening during what historically has been the busiest week of hurricane season.

As the graph below shows, since World War II, mid-September has typically been the time of year with the most active Atlantic storms and hurricanes. The calculations by the National Hurricane Center pinpoint September 10 as the actual peak of the hurricane season.

September usually has the most favorable conditions for hurricanes to develop over the largest area of the Atlantic Basin, as we explained in a previous article.

Not This Time

Instead the NHC's outlook map at 8 a.m. ET on September 10 was both devoid of active storms and areas that could develop for the first time on any Sept. 10 in NHC records dating to 2003. It was also the first time there was not an active storm on September 10 since 2016.

One year ago we were tracking Hurricane Francine approaching the Gulf Coast, a tropical depression that would soon become Gordon, and three other areas. And five years ago on Sept. 14, five systems of at least tropical depression strength were active at once, something that happened only once previously since 1971.

Why So Quiet?

The Atlantic Basin that is on vacation for several reasons, as detailed nicely by the Colorado State University tropical forecast team headed by Phil Klotzbach in a Sept. 9 update.

First, significant swaths of dry, stable air are pumping through the tropic's Main Development Region between Africa and the Lesser Antilles.

Dry air makes it difficult for thunderstorms to persist near any area of low pressure such as tropical waves that move westward off Africa during hurricane season. Without these basic building block thunderstorms, a tropical storm can't form.

That's what happened last weekend to a system we previously thought had a good chance of developing — Invest 91L — well east of the Lesser Antilles. It choked on dry air.

There are also some stubborn pockets of wind shear over the southwest, central and eastern Atlantic, as well as the Gulf. You can see these areas shaded in pink and maroon in the map below. Wind shear tends to either rip apart or blow thunderstorms away from any area of low pressure trying to organize.

Slow Pace

It has been 13 days since the last tropical storm, Fernand, and the 2025 hurricane season has now fallen behind the average pace.

We're now about two storms and two hurricanes behind the average pace through the week of Sept. 7.

Using a metric called the ACE index — which doesn't just count storms, but also how intense they become and how long they last — 2025 is about 30% slower than average right now.

We've been pretty fortunate, so far.

The season's only hurricane so far, Erin, avoided a landfall, though it did bring flooding rain to the Leeward Islands, as well as coastal flooding, rip currents and some winds to the East Coast. Erin accounted for 82% of the entire season's activity, or ACE index.

Otherwise, it was three "fish storms" in the central Atlantic and two others that triggered inland flooding, Barry in Texas and Chantal in the Carolinas and Virginia.

According to the CSU forecast team, if the Atlantic Basin doesn't generate a tropical storm through Sept. 16, it would be only the second time since 1950 without a named storm between Aug. 29 - Sept. 16. The other year that happened was in 1992.

Far From Over

As you may have noticed from the graph near the top of this article, there's still plenty left this hurricane season.

Six additional storms, including four hurricanes, form in an average season from mid-September through November. Using the ACE index, over half of a season's activity still lies ahead.

That activity can also develop quickly, especially closer to the U.S. and Caribbean.

And according to analyses from tropical scientist Brian McNoldy, Gulf water is record warm right now and it's near record warm in the Caribbean Sea.

2022 A Cautionary Tale

Three years ago, August didn't produce a single storm. It was the first "0 for August" in the Atlantic Basin in 25 years.

But then the dam burst. Eleven storms formed, including eight of the season's nine hurricanes, from September through November 2022.

That included Hurricanes Ian and Nicole in Florida, and Fiona in Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and its powerhouse remnant in Atlantic Canada.

This is a reminder to stay prepared for hurricane season, despite this heart of the season lull.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.