Hurricane Season 2026 by Elise Plunk

Louisi­ana’s top weather offi­cial said the 2026 hur­ricane sea­son is expec­ted to pro­duce an aver­age num­ber of storms, per­haps slightly less. 

That would mean about 13 named storms, with roughly half reach­ing hur­ricane strength and three becom­ing major hur­ricanes. 

But state cli­ma­to­lo­gist Jay Grymes, who shared expert con­sensus fore­casts for the sea­son Wed­nes­day with mem­bers of the Coastal Res­tor­a­tion and Pro­tec­tion Author­ity, said that’s no reason for any­one to let their guard down. Pre­dic­tions of a Super El Niño are behind the out­look. The weather pat­tern occurs when warmer-than-aver­age water tem­per­at­ures just below extend throughout most of the equat­orial Pacific Ocean. “The idea here is that with El Niño, we could see fewer storms get­ting organ­ized, fewer storms achiev­ing higher degrees of strength,” Grymes said. 

The El Niño pat­tern effect­ively takes a devel­op­ing trop­ical sys­tem and tilts it, Grymes said, com­par­ing i t to a lean­ing chim­ney. “It’s not very effi­cient,” he said, “and, in fact, that tilt at some point can even rip the storm apart.” Grymes shared his insights a day before the National Oceanic and Atmo­spheric Admin­is­tra­tion will give its pre­dic­tion for the Atlantic hur­ricane sea­son that lasts from June 1 through Nov. 30. He cited research from ten uni­versit­ies, includ­ing Col­or­ado State, North Car­o­lina State and Penn State. 

But Grymes warned that while pre­dic­tions for the 2026 sea­son call for less activ­ity, the increas­ing poten­tial for rap­idly intensi­fy­ing hur­ricanes and mul­tiple storm impacts over a single sea­son mean Louisi­ana offi­cials and res­id­ents need to remain vigil­ant. “The fact is we really don’t have a good fore­cast yet for what Louisi­ana may exper­i­ence, and so there’s abso­lutely no reason for any­one to be think­ing that because the fore­cast calls for a reduc­tion in activ­ity, we can breathe sigh relief,” he said. 

Over the past 25 years, hur­ricane activ­ity in the Gulf of Mex­ico has increased. Its warm waters have fueled smal­ler hur­ricanes into big­ger, more intense storms. While no named hur­ricanes made land­fall in Louisi­ana dur­ing 2025, Grymes warned against think­ing it means this year will be unevent­ful again. “We have short-term memory in our pub­lic audi­ence,” Grymes said, “and so they’ve for­got­ten already what just happened, you know, three, five, seven years ago.”

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