At a Glance
- It's been nine years since the Atlantic hurricane season had fewer storms than average.
- A three-year stretch in the 2010s was much quieter, due in part to a strong El Niño and dry air.
- Some seasons in years past had few storms at all.
- However, there were still impactful storms even during quiet seasons.
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The Atlantic hurricane season isn't always busy, but it's been almost 10 years since a season produced fewer storms than average.
We understand if it seems like every hurricane season lately has been busy, active, destructive, awful or whatever adjective you'd like to use. Three of the last four hurricane seasons generated at least 20 storms. Thirteen hurricanes formed in 2020.
But quieter hurricane seasons do happen. It's just been a while since we've had one.
Here's what average looks like. Over the 30-year period from 1991 through 2020, an average of 14 storms formed each season, seven of which became hurricanes and three of which became at least Category 3 wind intensity. About one to two of those hurricanes usually make landfall in the U.S., according to statistics compiled by NOAA.
The past couple of years were near average. While 2023 did generate 20 storms, only seven of those became hurricanes and three intensified to Cat. 3 or stronger. Those hurricane tallies were right on the average.
And 2022's tallies - 14 storms, eight hurricanes, two Cat. 3 plus hurricanes - were all on par.
It's been nine years since the last truly quiet season. In 2015, only 11 storms formed, four of which became hurricanes, and only two strengthened to Category 3 or stronger.
That was also the last year we didn't have a single U.S. hurricane landfall.
El Niño played a major role in 2015. One factor behind that less active season was one of the strongest El Niños on record.
This periodic warming of the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean tends to produce stronger wind shear and sinking air over the Caribbean Sea and adjacent areas of the Atlantic Basin. Those suppressing factors tend to weaken or rip apart a tropical cyclone.
This increased wind shear in 2015 contributed to the demise of five storms in the heart of that season.
2015 was part of a three-year quiet stretch. In 2014, six hurricanes formed, but only eight total storms developed that entire season. That was the least in any year since 1997.
El Niño hadn't become established yet in 2014, but wind shear from the Caribbean Sea to the west African coast was the second-highest on record from June through August. The atmosphere was also unusually stable and not supportive of the thunderstorms needed to develop and maintain tropical cyclones in that same strip of the tropical Atlantic Ocean in 2014.
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The 2013 season was even more strange. Fourteen storms that year was exactly average. But, only two managed to become hurricanes, tied for the fewest in any hurricane season in the satellite era (since the mid-1960s).
Neither of those two hurricanes managed to reach Category 2 status, something that hadn't happened in any season since 1968.
Despite the lack of an El Niño, eight of that season's storms eventually succumbed to either dry air, strong wind shear or both.
There's another index where 2013 through 2015 really stood out. Meteorologists use a metric called the ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy) index, which takes into account not just the number, but also how strong and how long-lasting the storms and hurricanes are in a season.
Notice the low ACE indices from 2013 through 2015 in the graph below. Each of those seasons had roughly half or less of the average ACE.
Following that, six straight seasons, from 2016 through 2021, were more active than average.
Interestingly, by this ACE metric, 2022 was actually markedly below average. That was due to a lack of longer-lived Cape Verde storms that track from near western Africa across the Atlantic Basin, as well as a rare August that failed to generate a single storm.
There have been other quiet seasons recently. Some other quiet seasons this century included 2009 (nine storms, three hurricanes during a weak to moderate El Niño) and 2006 (only 10 storms the year following the record 2005 season).
During the cool phase of a 20- to 40-year oscillation of North Atlantic Ocean sea-surface temperatures known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, less active hurricane seasons were common in the 1980s and early 1990s. Eight of the 15 hurricane seasons from 1980 through 1994 produced less than 10 storms.
Quieter seasons can still be dangerous. Immediately following another strong El Niño, only four named storms formed in 1983, the least in any season in the satellite era.
However, one was Category 3 Hurricane Alicia, which ransacked the Houston metro area with destructive winds and storm surge flooding.
The three "quiet" years in the 2010s still managed to produce three storms that were deadly and/or destructive enough to be retired from future use in name lists: Hurricane Ingrid (2013), Tropical Storm Erika (2015) and Hurricane Joaquin (2015).
It only takes one landfall to have a damaging impact, whether it's the nation's only landfall, or one of many in a given hurricane season.
Whether an active or quiet season is forecast, you should be prepared every year.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. His lifelong love of meteorology began with a close encounter with a tornado as a child in Wisconsin. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on X (formerly Twitter), Threads, Facebook and Bluesky.
