Weathering NOAA’s ‘Below Normal Atlantic Hurricane Season’ And A Super El Niño

What a super El Niño on one hand and a below-normal Atlantic hurricane season on the other mean for the insurance industry is a matter of perspective: the two climate phenomena are interrelated, fewer hurricanes in one area could be better or worse than more drought and flooding in other places—and the industry is constantly preaching preparedness regardless of the forecast.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasters on Thursday came out with a prediction of a below-normal hurricane season for the Atlantic basin this year. NOAA’s outlook for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs June 1 to November 30, predicts a 35% chance of a near-normal season, a 10% chance of an above-normal season and a 55% chance of a below-normal season.

That falls in-line with a forecast from Colorado State University in April, which predicted the Atlantic hurricane season was expected to fall below historical averages because an El Niño formation typically sends winds across the southern U.S. that could rip apart tropical storms.

NOAA is forecasting eight to 14 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher). Of those, three to six are forecast to become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including one to three major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5 with winds of 111 mph or higher).

Kevin Sandelin, risk engineering and loss control leader with Allianz Commercial, and a resident of southern Florida, was on a call with NOAA to listen to the forecast and called the news “good,” but he said the company is focused on getting clients ready for any perils that come their way.

“One of the folks on the NOAA call today also gave some sage wisdom that it only takes one,” Sandelin said. “And at the end of the day, it could be ‘Oh yeah, we’re only going to have a handful of named storms, maybe one-to-three major hurricanes and three-to-six hurricanes.’ None of that matters if you have one storm that moves really slow or one cat 3 or 4 or 5. Or worse, one that hits just in the right or the wrong way. So, we don’t get too caught up in the predictions necessarily as it pertains to what we do with our clients.”

On the flip side of NOAA’s Atlantic hurricane season forecast, an increasingly likely super El Niño could by some acounts impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

A super El Niño is an unofficial term for the periodic climate pattern characterized by the warming of ocean surface temperatures in the Central And Eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which disrupts global weather, atmospheric circulation and marine life. A group of Australian researchers are credited with term super El Niño in a monthly weather review paper more than 20 years ago. They used it to describe events where the El Niño conditions are warmer that average, at least 3°C, in that part of the ocean.

The media has ran with the “super” aspect in recent weeks, along with news from some modelers who believe the upcoming El Niño could become the most intense since at least 1950. The storm years 1982–83, 1997–98 and 2015–16 could be considered “super El Niños.”

This year’s El Niño could be impactful and it could come soon. NOAA’s National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center last week gave an 82% chance that El Niño will be in place for the period May through July.

One forecast refers to a “Code Red” scenario for the global atmosphere, explaining that it is being driven by a massive oceanic Kelvin wave (a kind of planetary wave) that has grown in recent weeks: “This subsurface heat pulse is expected to rise to the surface levels, acting as a release valve,’ that will kickstart the reorganization of global weather patterns, starting in the tropics.”

Eric Uhlhorn, principal scientist at Verisk, is cautioning about the addition of “super,” and ringing too much alarm over a reasonable view that preaches caution ahead of any storm season.

“There’s a couple of outliers of the forecast that are saying, ‘Yes this could be one of the strongest on record.’ But overall most of the forecasts of what’s coming are definitely an El Niño but aren’t screaming ‘This is going to be the biggest ever.’ So there might be a little bit of hype at this point,” Uhlhorn said.

The intensity at this point is speculative, but there is some risk. Exceptionally warm waters and a developing El Niño increase the risk of direct hurricane impacts in Hawaii, Southern California and parts of Mexico this year, according to an AccuWeather analysis out last week. That analysis shows the Eastern and Central Pacific basins are expected to produce above the historical average number of named storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes in 2026.

Typical global effects of El Niños produce warmer global average temperatures and include heavy rains and flooding in California and Peru, and drought in Australia, Indonesia, parts of India.

Of course, as Uhlhorn noted, El Niño patterns generally suppress tropical activity in the Atlantic, so there’s an offset.

“Forecasters look at the sea surface temperatures across the Atlantic particularly in the main development region, and those are running a right about average, a little bit above average, which is quite a bit different than the last couple of years where the ocean temperatures, particularly in the tropics across the Atlantic, have been quite warm,” he said. “So, things have cooled off a little bit.”

Sandelin and his team is eyeing the potential effects of an El Niño, which he says will bring more rain and exposure to flooding in areas including the West, Pacific Northwest, and parts of Canada, as well as increased chances of drought and wildfire.

“So we’ll take the reduction, we’ll take less storms, but we’re going to shift our focus and we’ll be putting some things out and talking to our science team and (clients in) exposed areas and asking them if they are prepared and sharing information about that, so that’s what we’ll lean into,” Sandelin said. “We’ll be thankful if it’s a slower, quieter hurricane season, which is wonderful, but we’re going to lean into focusing on flooding and the exposed areas. We’re going to focus in on the wildfires and the drying out and all the impacts that come along with that.”