How A Potential Super El Niño Could Affect Hurricane Tracks This Season

How El Niño Impacts Atlantic Hurricanes

A potential super El Niño may exert some influence on where hurricanes track in 2026, if past hurricane seasons are a guide.

We've previously discussed how El Niño, in general, can reduce the number of storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin.

But while it's just one ingredient in the recipe of how active a hurricane season is, it turns out stronger El Niños also set up weather patterns that determine where hurricanes go.

(MORE: Super El Niño Possible | Hurricane Season Outlook)

All El Niños

We examined all hurricane seasons in the satellite era — since 1966 — in which at least a weak El Niño was either in place or had developed.

Below is a track map of all hurricanes during those El Niño hurricane seasons since 1966. The segments in red and pink show when each was a hurricane and Category 3 or stronger hurricane, respectively.

Many hurricanes stayed in the central Atlantic, while a few ventured into the Caribbean Sea and a disconcerting number made it into the Gulf.

You might look at that messy map and wonder how that's different from any other hurricane season.

Super El Niños

Now, let's focus only on those tracks during the most intense El Niños called "super" El Niños, shown in the map below. We colored in gray the portions of the tracks where each hurricane was either a tropical storm or weaker, so the map wouldn't look so blank.

Of course, there are fewer years, so you'd expect fewer tracks. There are only 12 tracks in those four years combined, an average of only three per year, less than half in an average hurricane season.

None of those reached the East Coast as hurricanes. There were a few Gulf hurricanes, including Danny in 1997 and Agnes in 1972, both Category 1.

Main Takeaways

Despite that rather messy looking first map, and a much more blank second map, there are some trends we can tease out.

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 a 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 have noted.

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. Both maps above show few tracks in the Caribbean Sea during recent El Niños. In fact, there hasn't been a single hurricane in the Caribbean Sea in any of the recent super El Niño seasons.

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 super 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 impactful storms can still happen. El Niño may help suppress numbers of storms and hurricanes, but as we have often said, it only takes one storm to make it a destructive season.

In the super El Niño 2015 hurricane season, Category 4 Hurricane Joaquin's stall hammered the central Bahamas for days, with devastating surge and winds.

That same season, Erika never made it to hurricane status and eventually fizzled in the Caribbean Sea. But before that, Erika triggered epic flooding in Dominica.

And what was Hurricane Agnes in the Gulf in 1972 is more infamous for the widespread inland flooding it triggered in the Northeast from Virginia to New York state after its second life off the Eastern Seaboard as a tropical storm.

Agnes claimed 122 lives in the U.S. and its almost $16 billion price tag was the nation's costliest storm, at the time.

As in investing, past performance does not mean the future will follow suit. Each 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, even if a super El Niño develops.

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.