El Niño is heating up faster than expected. Here's what that means for hurricane season

Bill Kearney, South Florida Sun Sentinel on May 16, 2026

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — El Niño is likely to show up sooner than previously expected, as early as late May, meaning it could have a better chance of hindering hurricanes later in the season, experts say.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in an update on Thursday that El Niño has an 82% chance of emerging from May to July 2026. The earlier it forms, the more likely it is to have an impact on hurricane season, which officially begins June 1 and runs through Nov. 30.

El Niño is a naturally occurring weather cycle that occurs when trade winds over the Pacific weaken, causing warm water to pile up along the Pacific coast of equatorial South America.

Instead of thunderstorms brewing near Indonesia, they mushroom up in the Central Pacific, setting off a chain reaction of weather effects that are felt globally, and including within the Atlantic hurricane season.

“The confidence in the strong El Niño is going up,” said Phil Klotzbach, atmospheric scientist with Colorado State University, who recently spoke at the Governor’s Hurricane Conference in West Palm Beach. Klotzbach said a strong El Niño could emerge as soon as mid to late June.

A strong El Niño occurs when sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific rise at least 1.5 C above average, making global impact more likely. “It’s already kind of starting to look like certain things are kind of locking in.”

Strong El Niños tend to topple hurricanes on the other side of the planet, in the Atlantic basin. “When you have thunderstorms, you have winds near the ocean surface that converge into those thunderstorms.

“The air goes up in the thunderstorms, then it spreads out aloft, so you end up with upper-level winds out of the west across the Eastern Pacific extending into the Caribbean,” Klotzbach said. “An El Niño alters the entire tropic circulation — you tend to get upper level winds out of the west that really shears (hurricanes) apart. It’s a double whammy of too much shear and also sinking motion and dry air,” said Klotzbach.

These dynamics occur in the tropical regions of the Caribbean and Atlantic, right where hurricanes are trying to form.

Ocean temperatures

Hot oceans fuel hurricanes. Though the Pacific is hot this year, the Atlantic is closer to normal.

“Right now the Atlantic is just a little bit warmer than normal,” Klotzbach said. “It’s not crazy warm. 2023 and 2024 were stupid high. 2025 was somewhat warmer than normal. This year is a little bit above normal.”

That will affect how El Niño behaves. The outlandishly high Atlantic sea-surface temperatures of 2023 put a kibosh on El Niño’s power.

“In 2023 we had the strong El Niño and a record-warm Atlantic at the same time, so we ended up with a pretty busy season — 20 storms. The Atlantic and the Indian Oceans were so dang hot, the tropical circulation didn’t look very much like El Niño, so the shear was fairly low.”

The models that were correct in forecasting an active season in 2023, despite a strong El Niño, are this year calling for very strong wind shear, and thus a relatively inactive Atlantic hurricane season.

NOAA said there’s also a 96% chance that El Niño will last well into winter — good news for combating Florida’s drought.

Last month, Klotzbach and his team at Colorado State issued their annual early hurricane season outlook, indicating that the season would be “somewhat below-average” with a total of 13 named storms (an average hurricane season sees 14 named storms).

This week, Klotzbach said that the rapid warming of the Pacific would likely lead his team to putting out “even lower forecast” in their next update, which will come out June 10.