With less than three weeks left in the official 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, AccuWeather experts are predicting a quiet end without any direct land impacts to the U.S. for the remainder of the already-quiet season.

A historic El Niño has been the driving force this hurricane season and is expected to continue through the official end of the season on Nov. 30, AccuWeather senior meteorologist Isaac Longley said.

“It’s definitely been a pretty quiet season overall, and we expect that to continue to be the case,” he said.

Only 10 named storms have formed since June 1, and few had any direct impacts to the U.S. Just one storm became a hurricane, with Isaias peaking at major hurricane strength before landfall in October at Category 2 strength in the Florida Panhandle. An average hurricane season typically sees 14 named storms, with seven of those being hurricanes and three major hurricanes at Category 3, 4 or 5 strength.

There may still be tropical development in the Caribbean near Central America, which Longley said is “the area to kind of keep an eye on” and typically where activity pops up throughout November. But if any systems were to try to move north, they likely would be “kind of torn apart” by the strong wind shear currently across the Gulf and off the southeastern U.S. coast, he said.

“There’s going to be very, very high amounts of wind shear and that is definitely not favorable for any tropical development, so that is the primary driving factor,” Longley said.

Longley said while ocean temperatures were warm enough for tropical development throughout the season, dry and dusty air that migrated off Africa, across the Atlantic and into the Gulf was a hindering factor, in addition to the robust El Niño.

Meteorologist and Fox Weather hurricane specialist Bryan Norcross also wrote on his blog Hurricane Intel this week that tropical development is unlikely through the rest of the month.

“The weather pattern over the Gulf, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic is in a wintertime mode,” Norcross wrote on his site. “The jet stream is being energized this year by the super El Niño, so it’s even more hostile to development than normal.”

Colorado State University experts twice downgraded their forecast for the number of storms earlier in the season. In August, the university’s experts predicated in their final outlook for the season a total of nine named storms, with four expected to become hurricanes and one becoming Category 3 or higher.

This season also marked the first time in the satellite observation era, which began in 1966, where no hurricanes formed prior to Oct. 1.

The National Hurricane Center does not expect any tropical cyclone activity within the next seven days.

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