Season forecasts published in spring 2026 predicted below-normal hurricane activity in the Atlantic and above-normal activity in the northeast and central Pacific due to El Niño developing in the Pacific. As of September 3, this pattern had materialized: 15 named storms and six hurricanes had formed in the northeast Pacific, while only five named storms and no hurricanes had been observed in the Atlantic because of wind shear. El Niño is increasing activity in the Pacific through warm waters while suppressing storms in the Atlantic.
EPIC aboard NASA’s DSCOVR satellite captured Lowell, Karina, and Marie in the Pacific and Edouard in the Atlantic in the same image on September 1 at 1:14 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (20:14 Universal Time). At the time, the satellite was nearly 1 million miles from Earth and just shy of 93 million miles from the Sun. Lowell reached Category 5 strength for several hours on September 2; Karina, to its east, strengthened to Category 4, leading to the simultaneous occurrence of these two levels in the region. Marie, southwest of Baja California, was intensifying.
Tropical Storm Edouard, seen over Louisiana and Texas, brought heavy rain and winds after making landfall; some areas recorded 15 to 24 inches (38 to 61 centimeters) of rain. On September 3, ACE was 4.4 in the Atlantic, about 9 percent of normal; in the northeast Pacific, it was 130, about 50 percent above normal.
Why it matters
This table shows that hurricane risk is not distributed evenly across ocean basins within the same season and that the regional effects of El Niño are directly reflected in the outcomes. High activity in the Pacific became evident as Lowell and Karina reached strong levels during the same period, while low activity in the Atlantic does not mean that threats in the region have disappeared. The heavy rainfall caused by Edouard in Louisiana and Texas demonstrates that even a small number of systems can produce serious consequences at the local level. The difference between ACE values, meanwhile, shows that the focus should be on which basin storm energy is concentrated in rather than on the season’s overall outlook. When storm numbers and satellite imagery are assessed together, it becomes clear that forecasts can explain not only total activity but also its regional distribution.