2026 hurricane forecast rolls out Florida's chances to get hit

• The forecast includes six hurricanes, with two potentially becoming major storms with winds of 111 mph or higher.
• An emerging El Niño weather pattern is expected to create storm-shredding wind shear in the Atlantic.
• Despite the forecast, Florida has a 74% probability of a named storm passing within 50 miles of its coast.

A leading seasonal hurricane forecast is calling for slightly below normal activity as a meaty storm-shredding El Niño develops but the Atlantic Ocean gives mixed signals as to its intent.

Colorado State University is predicting 13 named storms for the season that begins June 1 and that follows Florida’s 2025 reprieve from tropical catastrophe.

Of the 13 named storms, six are forecast to become hurricanes including two that could swell to major muscle with 111 mph Category 3 winds or higher. An average hurricane season has 14 named storms and seven hurricanes, of which three become major hurricanes.

For Florida, which dangles into the tropics like bait on a hook for tropical cyclones, the forecast means lower probabilities that a named storm will come within 50 miles of its sandy border but still puts it in the top vulnerability spot of U.S. coastal states.

What are Florida's chances of seeing a hurricane landfall in 2026?

According to CSU, there is a 74% probability that a named storm will pass within 50 miles of Florida's coast and a 21% chance that a major hurricane could make the same trip during the 2026 season. The climatological average for a named storm is 86% and 29% for a major hurricane.

North Carolina has the second highest probability of a named storm coming within 50 miles this year at 54% with Louisiana coming in third at 52%.

CSU’s report, which it has issued for 43 years, came the same day that the Climate Prediction Center ended its La Niña advisories and declared that the atmosphere has officially transitioned to a neutral pattern.

The center said there is a 61% chance of El Niño emerging in the May through July period and persisting through the end of 2026.

It’s a year where Florida will recognize the 100^th anniversary of the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 on Sept. 18. The high-end Category 4 storm killed about 375 Floridians and caused an estimated $20 billion in damage in today’s dollars, according to a presentation given at the National Hurricane Conference.

How many hurricanes or tropical storms hit Florida in 2025?

But emergency managers and meteorologists are anxious that a year without hurricanes harrying Florida in 2025 will lead to a complacency in preparations. That’s despite the state getting knocked out by three storms in 2024 — Milton, Helene and Debby — devastating Idalia in 2023, and Category 4 Ian in 2022.

“We had relatively light impacts to the U.S. in 2025 with no hurricane landfalls for the first time since 2015,” said National Hurricane Center Director Mike Brennan. “So, as we head into this season we are coming in at a level where people didn’t have to think a lot about hurricanes last year.”

Still, Brennan, who spoke at the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando, noted that Tropical Storm Chantal drowned six people in freshwater flooding in North Carolina after it made landfall July 6. Four people died when their cars were overtaken by floodwaters. Two men died while canoeing on a lake in heavy rainfall, according to the National Hurricane center’s postmortem report on the storm.

“It’s really important to emphasize that it doesn’t really matter what any seasonal hurricane forecast says, you have to prepare as if you are going to be affected every year because that risk is there,” Brennan said. “It doesn’t take a landfalling major hurricane for there to be significant life-threatening impacts.”

What areas of Florida are most vulnerable to hurricanes in 2026?

CSU’s forecast follows AccuWeather’s seasonal prediction released in March which calls for 11 to 16 named storms, 4 to seven hurricanes and two to four major hurricanes.

The Climate Prediction Center, a branch of NOAA, will issue its hurricane forecast May 21.

AccuWeather outlined Florida’s Gulf Coast from near Tampa through the Panhandle as having the highest risk from a tropical cyclone this season. The rest of Florida’s coast from about Fort Myers through Jacksonville has a near average risk of getting hit by a landfalling storm.

"It's very important that everybody from South Texas all the way to Maine prepares equally for each and every hurricane season, regardless of what the official forecast is," AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva said in a statement. "Even if it's expected to be a slightly below average hurricane season, we can still see major hits across the United States."

AccuWeather, as well as most leading forecasts, look to the phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, as a key predictor to what the hurricane season may bring. ENSO includes El Niño and La Niña.

The Climate Prediction Center believes there’s an 80% chance for neutral conditions to last into the April to June period.

They’re giving a 61% chance for El Niño to emerge during May through July and persist through at least the end of 2026.

Will there be a 2026'super' El Niño? How will it affect hurricanes

The last El Niño occurred from May 2023 through March 2024.

“You’re going to be hearing a ton about El Niño,” said meteorologist Jeff Berardelli in a forecast for WFLA Channel 8 in Tampa. “And one of the reasons is our latest computer run of the European model shows the strongest El Niño on record.”

During El Niño, water across the eastern path of the Pacific Ocean warms, making radical shifts to rainfall patterns and increasing wind shear in the Atlantic that works to tear apart cyclones as they develop.

With La Niña, waters in the Pacific cool, rainfall retreats to the west and the westerly winds wane — leaving the Atlantic and U.S. vulnerable to tropical cyclones.

The Climate Prediction Center isn’t entirely sold on the idea of a very strong El Niño, which is defined as water temperatures in the Pacific that are 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal.

In its April 9 forecast, it puts the chances of that happening at about 25% and says it largely depends on westerly winds in the Pacific continuing.

But the forecast for a very strong or “super” El Niño was bolstered by a recent run of the European model that calls for water temperatures to be 2.5 degrees Celsius or 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal during the peak of hurricane season.

During the 2015-2016 “Godzilla” El Niño, water temperatures peaked at 2.37 degrees Celsius (4.26 Fahrenheit) warmer than normal.

Phil Klotzbach, a senior hurricane researcher at Colorado State University and lead author of its seasonal forecast, nicknamed what may be coming a “Jurassic" El Niño.

“Will we get there? Who’s to know for sure but certainly there is a good potential that we will get a robust El Niño this summer or fall,” Klotzbach said during an April 2 presentation at the National Hurricane Conference.

But Klotzbach’s April 9 report, which he writes in conjunction with a handful of CSU professors and researchers, said there is a wild card this hurricane season in addition to the strength of El Niñ0.

Waters temperatures in the western tropical Atlantic are warmer than normal for this time of year, while they are slightly cooler in the eastern tropical and subtropical Atlantic. Warmer ocean temperatures are fuel to budding hurricanes. Cooler temperatures provide less acceleration power.

“Since 2016, we’ve had 10 hurricane seasons and nine have been above normal or hyperactive according to NOAA’s measurement,” Klotzbach said. “The only one that wasn’t was 2022, which was still very, very impactful.”

That year, Ian killed 156 people in the U.S, including 66 in Florida. Forty-one of the people who died in Florida did so with saltwater in their lungs after being overtaken by flooding storm surge.

Kimberly Miller is a journalist for the USA TODAY NETWORK FLORIDA. She covers weather, the environment and critters as the Embracing Florida reporter. If you have news tips, please send them to [email protected]. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY, at palmbeachpost.com/newsletters.