2026 Just Broke This Hurricane Record

It is September 29. The Atlantic still has no hurricane.

Zero.

We have had eight named storms. Arthur. Bertha. Cristobal. Dolly. Edouard. Fay. Gonzalo. Hanna. All of them stayed tropical storms. Then they fell apart. Fay came closest. Winds got near 70 mph. Then the storm broke up.

A normal year already has five hurricanes by now. The first one usually shows up around August 11. The old record wait was September 11. This year blew past that. September is supposed to be the busy month. It is about to end with zero hurricanes.

That is the tropics. Out here in western Massachusetts we just lived through a rare September nor’easter. Trees came down. Power went out in spots. Roads got blocked. The Berkshires did not get hit as hard as the coast. We had under an inch of rain and gusts in the 40s. East of us got 5 to 10 inches and gusts near 70.

The difference between tropical storms and nor'easters

People mix these storms up because both can soak you and knock stuff over. They are not the same.

A tropical storm runs on warm ocean water. The middle of the storm is warm. That is why they start down in the tropics. They need calm air around them to grow. Hit 74 mph and it becomes a hurricane.

A nor���easter runs on a fight in the air. Cold air from the north slams into warmer air near the coast. The wind wraps in from the northeast. That is the name. These storms form along the East Coast. They can get huge. They can hang around for days. In winter they can dump snow. This weekend they just dumped rain and dropped trees.
Same messy weekend. Two different kinds of storms.

The Atlantic is this quiet because El Niño is strong. It is sending rough winds across the ocean. Storms try to stand up. Those winds knock them over. The season still has two months left. One late storm can change everything. For now the score is eight tropical storms, zero hurricanes. And the storm we actually felt was a nor’easter.