2026 Indicators: SST's, MSLP, Shear, SAL, Steering, Instability (Day 16+ Climate Models)

[TomballEd]

Just saw the locked until April thread and wondering if we can get to 1997 levels of low numbers/low ACE. Not a prediction, just seeing warm Atlantic subtropics compared to the deep tropics and a warm ENSO of yet to be determined magnitude.

[Category5Kaiju]

I decided to make a simple table categorizing the activities of El Nino Atlantic years since the active era began in 1995. Note that "active" refers to anything that doesn't operationally classify as "below-average," "impactful" refers to the quality of generating retirement-worthy storms (Idalia in 2023 being a close contender that falls short due to factors like the relatively sparse location it hit and the background fact that billion-dollar hurricanes are very commonplace nowadays), and "intense" refers to the quality of generating storms of Category 4 or higher strength.




Of the 9 El Nino years since 1995, only one (1997) ended up being below-average while also featuring very weak storms, none of which inflicted enough damages to be retired. 2006 came close to missing all three categories but also featured 2 Category 3 hurricanes that harmlessly spun out to sea, both of which did quite a bit to raise the ACE levels to at least near-normal levels.

It remains to be seen what 2026 will bring, but at least if we were to solely look at El Nino season behaviors since the active era began, 2026 will more than likely check at least one of the three big categories. Combine that with things like RONI, a wet or dry Africa, recent seasons featuring powerful, destructive storms, and I would say that there are a lot of possibilities on how exactly this year will pan out.

[cycloneye]

This 2026 indicators thread has been lackluster in terms of participation if you compare it with the 2026 ENSO Updates thread that has been very active. I think members are waiting to see how ENSO is going to do in the next few months to then look at the different indicators for the NATL 2026 Hurricane Season.