NOAA will issue its 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook at 11 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, May 21, at the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center, 3450 Flightline Drive, Lakeland, Florida. The speakers will be Dr. Neil Jacobs, NOAA administrator; Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service; and Rear Adm. Chad M. Cary, NOAA Corps Director. Matthew Rosencrans, lead hurricane season forecaster with the National Weather Service, will take questions afterward. [1]

The Atlantic named-storm count for 2026 through May 14 is zero. The National Hurricane Center's tropical cyclone summary page records no named storms, no hurricanes, no major hurricanes. The accumulated cyclone energy is zero. [2] That is the baseline against which the May 21 outlook will be received. The season officially begins June 1 and ends November 30.

Two product changes accompany the outlook. The National Hurricane Center is rolling out, for the 2026 season, an experimental ellipses-based forecast cone graphic that displays approximately 90 per cent coverage of historical track-error rather than the existing cone's 67 per cent coverage. The change is intended to make the forecast uncertainty visible to coastal populations who interpret the existing cone as a confidence-bounded prediction rather than as a 67-per-cent-coverage envelope. [3] The second change is operational: storm-surge watches and warnings will be issued for Hawaiian Islands coastlines for the first time in 2026, extending the surge-alert system to the central Pacific basin.

The forecasting context the outlook will navigate is unusual. The Climate Prediction Center has, in successive monthly updates, raised the probability of El Nino emergence during the early hurricane season. El Nino conditions typically increase wind shear over the Caribbean and tropical Atlantic, suppressing storm formation. Against that suppression signal, Atlantic sea-surface temperatures have been running above the 1991-2020 baseline through the spring. Colorado State University's April 9 outlook projected 13 named storms, 6 hurricanes, 2 major hurricanes — a slightly-below-average season with the El Nino as the dominant suppressing factor. [4] NOAA's outlook on May 21 will be the first official federal pre-season forecast that incorporates the May 14 ENSO Diagnostic Discussion. The two assessments are coupled.

-- DARA OSEI, London