The lack of hurricanes also means that heat is not being removed from the Gulf of Mexico. Therefore, future hurricanes are likely to be more powerful and more frequent.
This does happen every El Niño this years is pretty wild. Every local forecasters is saying "IDFK" and they are right. The the great Atlantic conveyor also starts to die this year we are in for evolution!
If 4-5 degree temperature jump comes true it will be an extinction for many species in tropical and sub tropical areas and millions of people will die as those will hit wet bulb temperature ie it will be to hot and humid for mammals
In 1877, 50 million people starved to death from El Niño. The charts are looking far worse in 2026 (thankfully our supply chains and infrastructure are much better today)
We can't stop the storms but we can work to avert the impacts and save lives.
One thing we need help with is how to provide detailed recommendations per city/address to people based on historical El Niños. What are local emergency notification services, where can you get free sandbags, should you expect floods, droughts, tornadoes? What backup services are there if 911 goes down? (If you have ideas, here's our github: https://github.com/titojankowski/elninoready)
Our first step is bringing together people at New York Climate Week so that's what's up on the site right now.
Strange timeline indeed but Stripe is a big backer for climate solutions and climate research, including a $2B carbon dioxide removal initiative called Frontier: https://stripe.com/climate
El Niño sends the jet stream southward. Once the jet stream gets far enough south it tears apart any developing storms in the Gulf and Caribbean Sea before they have a chance to become a problem.
> Given the strong and still-strengthening El Niño, which tends to reduce the number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic basin while boosting numbers in the Pacific, there is some chance that this season could end on Nov. 30 with no hurricanes.
But I am not liking this site. Both articles are mostly just restating "this is really rare" in 5+ different ways without explaining why. If anyone has a better site, a link would be most appreciated.
Overall the expectations are an increase in intensity and inability to predict. There is no expectation around consistency. That is why climate change is going to be such a disaster, it's not acutely predictable and it's death by a thousand cuts for us. The floods in Nepal etc are a good example. Very hard to predict, extremely distructive.
The Nepal incident is also messy because it's a extremely specific local/regional phenomenon, which was always a threat (and has happened before in other, less-populated areas around the Himalayas), but without consistent warming leading to glacier loss, it would be a random rare tragedy. Now that we know what happened and what causes it, we can pretty well expect that it will happen again... but there are so many similar hanging glacers high above steep V-shaped river valleys that we can't easily monitor or predict, not to mention alert locals and evacuate people in time. How many other similar local phenomena will appear? Impossible to say.
> I thought the warming waters were supposed to increase the number of hurricanes?
That is a question. I suppose the answer is yes, you thought that.
You likely thought that because - Holy cow. Year after year after year of explosively strengthening Cat5 storms is fairly well unprecedented.
source: FL coastal resident and repeated hurricane relief worker.
Equally unprecedented is the supercharged El Nino that's been interfering with the Atlantic Basin's ability to form storms, in proportion to it's record development.
Weather patterns in the Americas and Asia change in the summer through winter months. Rainfall changes throughout the Americas, and Asia sees worsening floods and storms.
Just because the Atlantic sees fewer hurricanes doesn't mean it's out of the woods - the number of winter storms increases.
Only in the Atlantic Ocean. In the Pacific, Hawaii has had back-to-back hurricanes for the last few weeks. Lala, Lowell, Karina, Norbert. They haven't made landfall there, but have come close enough to send flash floods and high storm surges.
No, not really. Massively fewer rain storms usually isn't good news in the long run. You kind of need rains to keep things from being too dry. I don't know about your body chemistry but water is pretty critical in mine.
I'd love more storms where I'm at. Things have been exceptionally hot and dry. I don't want giant massive Cat 5 storms, but a severe lack of tropical storms and smaller hurricanes hasn't been good.
And as others have mentioned, hurricanes end up cooling off the waters. The lack of these storms from developing due to atmospheric effects destroying them before they grow means the heat builds. So when El Nino goes away, we're likely to get even worse storms soon after.
The lack of hurricanes also means that heat is not being removed from the Gulf of Mexico. Therefore, future hurricanes are likely to be more powerful and more frequent.
https://news.wfsu.org/state-news/2026-08-31/rising-humid-hea...
And marine populations will suffer. Changes in currents will affect shipping. Overall a disaster.
I wonder if our fisheries or our insect-pollinated crops will collapse first.
I've always liked the Army over the Marines
This does happen every El Niño this years is pretty wild. Every local forecasters is saying "IDFK" and they are right. The the great Atlantic conveyor also starts to die this year we are in for evolution!
If 4-5 degree temperature jump comes true it will be an extinction for many species in tropical and sub tropical areas and millions of people will die as those will hit wet bulb temperature ie it will be to hot and humid for mammals
Came here to say this.
I saw someone call out the stock performance of $OC (shingles) vs strong el ninos... it seems so obvious. What else is like that?
This El Niño is off the charts for any ever recorded in human history.
Stripe's climate scientist Zeke Hausfather came to AirMiners to tell us about what's next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Xu_H3Wo8o
In 1877, 50 million people starved to death from El Niño. The charts are looking far worse in 2026 (thankfully our supply chains and infrastructure are much better today)
We can't stop the storms but we can work to avert the impacts and save lives.
We're building tools at: https://elninoready.earth
One thing we need help with is how to provide detailed recommendations per city/address to people based on historical El Niños. What are local emergency notification services, where can you get free sandbags, should you expect floods, droughts, tornadoes? What backup services are there if 911 goes down? (If you have ideas, here's our github: https://github.com/titojankowski/elninoready)
Our first step is bringing together people at New York Climate Week so that's what's up on the site right now.
AMA
> Stripe's climate scientist Zeke Hausfather
Who?? The ecommerce website wants us to listen to the climate scientist they bought?
Strange timeline indeed but Stripe is a big backer for climate solutions and climate research, including a $2B carbon dioxide removal initiative called Frontier: https://stripe.com/climate
Amazed that I have never heard of this. Feel like the positive PR would be a large incentive for them doing this at all.
Huh, that’s actually really cool.
I thought the warming waters were supposed to increase the number of hurricanes?
El Niño sends the jet stream southward. Once the jet stream gets far enough south it tears apart any developing storms in the Gulf and Caribbean Sea before they have a chance to become a problem.
Also having large waves of Saharan dust which is too dry and inhibits hurricane development.
Where does this dust end up? Into the oceans? Because iron-rich dust entering the oceans helps create nutrition for algae which can absorb CO2
Believe it or not at least 40 million tons of it ends up in the Amazon basin each year where it does have an effect on the plants there: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/1/1/014...
It goes elsewhere too, as expected.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/hurricane/will-2026-go-down-w... says:
> Given the strong and still-strengthening El Niño, which tends to reduce the number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic basin while boosting numbers in the Pacific, there is some chance that this season could end on Nov. 30 with no hurricanes.
But I am not liking this site. Both articles are mostly just restating "this is really rare" in 5+ different ways without explaining why. If anyone has a better site, a link would be most appreciated.
Stripe's climate scientist Zeke Hausfather built this dashboard: https://dashboard.theclimatebrink.com/#enso
Overall the expectations are an increase in intensity and inability to predict. There is no expectation around consistency. That is why climate change is going to be such a disaster, it's not acutely predictable and it's death by a thousand cuts for us. The floods in Nepal etc are a good example. Very hard to predict, extremely distructive.
The Nepal incident is also messy because it's a extremely specific local/regional phenomenon, which was always a threat (and has happened before in other, less-populated areas around the Himalayas), but without consistent warming leading to glacier loss, it would be a random rare tragedy. Now that we know what happened and what causes it, we can pretty well expect that it will happen again... but there are so many similar hanging glacers high above steep V-shaped river valleys that we can't easily monitor or predict, not to mention alert locals and evacuate people in time. How many other similar local phenomena will appear? Impossible to say.
> I thought the warming waters were supposed to increase the number of hurricanes?
That is a question. I suppose the answer is yes, you thought that.
You likely thought that because - Holy cow. Year after year after year of explosively strengthening Cat5 storms is fairly well unprecedented.
source: FL coastal resident and repeated hurricane relief worker.
Equally unprecedented is the supercharged El Nino that's been interfering with the Atlantic Basin's ability to form storms, in proportion to it's record development.
My understanding was fewer storms, but the ones that do happen, are stronger.
El Nino decreases Atlantic hurricane activity.
Weather patterns in the Americas and Asia change in the summer through winter months. Rainfall changes throughout the Americas, and Asia sees worsening floods and storms.
Just because the Atlantic sees fewer hurricanes doesn't mean it's out of the woods - the number of winter storms increases.
The end of the post touches on it, but couldn’t this be foreshadowing the really bad El Niño that they’ve been talking about?
Yes El Niño creates sheer in the tropical Atlantic inhibiting tropical cyclone formation in that area
El Niño is already underway. Stripe's climate scientist Zeke Hausfather built a dashboard here: https://dashboard.theclimatebrink.com/#enso
We're way off the charts already.
The Sharpie works!!
Such good news.
Only in the Atlantic Ocean. In the Pacific, Hawaii has had back-to-back hurricanes for the last few weeks. Lala, Lowell, Karina, Norbert. They haven't made landfall there, but have come close enough to send flash floods and high storm surges.
No, not really. Massively fewer rain storms usually isn't good news in the long run. You kind of need rains to keep things from being too dry. I don't know about your body chemistry but water is pretty critical in mine.
I'd love more storms where I'm at. Things have been exceptionally hot and dry. I don't want giant massive Cat 5 storms, but a severe lack of tropical storms and smaller hurricanes hasn't been good.
And as others have mentioned, hurricanes end up cooling off the waters. The lack of these storms from developing due to atmospheric effects destroying them before they grow means the heat builds. So when El Nino goes away, we're likely to get even worse storms soon after.
Reminds me of Al Gore's movie poster.