The Atlantic Is About to End Its Hurricane-Free Streak — Possibly With a Record-Late First Storm

For the first time in the modern record, an Atlantic hurricane season could reach October without a single hurricane. That streak looks about to end in the Gulf of Mexico.

The system the National Hurricane Center is tracking as AL92 — a broad low in the southwestern Gulf — is expected to become a tropical depression within a day, then intensify as it drifts north toward the US Gulf Coast. If it reaches tropical-storm strength it will be named Isaias; forecasters put the chance of cyclone formation above 90% within 48 hours.

The reason for the silence so far is El Niño, which is strengthening rapidly and loading the Atlantic with vertical wind shear that tears developing storms apart. The same phenomenon has kept the Pacific busy: remnants of Hurricane Polo soaked the southwestern and central United States last week.

A record that has stood for 121 years is in play. According to the National Weather Service, the latest date on record for a season's first Atlantic hurricane is 8 October 1905. If Isaias reaches hurricane strength after Thursday, 2026 will have the latest first hurricane ever observed. As of Tuesday the system was still a depression, so the record was not yet broken.

Intensity forecasts are unusually wide. Google DeepMind's WeatherNext 3 model projects peak strength between Thursday and Friday, with maximum sustained winds anywhere between Category 1 and near Category 5 — a spread that reflects genuine uncertainty about how much time the storm spends over warm Gulf water. The NHC advises interests from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle to monitor the system; small-craft advisories run from the eastern Louisiana coast to north-eastern Florida.

Landfall scenarios in ensemble guidance stretch from Biloxi, Mississippi, east to Seaside in the Florida Panhandle, with the storm then tracking inland across the Southeast and weakening to a post-tropical cyclone by Sunday. NOAA's Global Ensemble Forecast System broadly agrees. A NOAA Gulfstream aircraft was scheduled to sample the environment over the Gulf, with an Air Force reconnaissance flight to investigate the system the following day.

Even without a hurricane, flooding is the headline risk: 'Regardless of development, heavy rainfall and associated flooding impacts could occur over portions of the northern Gulf Coast, the southeastern United States, and Florida later this week and this weekend,' the NHC said.