Why El Niño Makes One Ocean Busy and the Other Quiet
In the eastern Pacific, where El Niño tends to strengthen hurricane activity, it has been a very active season: 22 named storms and 12 hurricanes, including 10 major hurricanes. That is already above the number that would typically develop across the whole of an average season, with two months left before this one ends.
The Atlantic gets the opposite treatment. El Niño tends to increase wind shear over the north Atlantic, a factor that tears storms apart and limits formation. The result is a basin that has remained eerily quiet.
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The useful lesson is that an El Niño year is not one single weather story. The same phenomenon tilts the eastern Pacific toward more hurricane activity while shredding storms over the Atlantic — one driver, opposite outcomes.
Quiet is relative, though. That Atlantic still produced a landfall: only one hurricane, Isaias, but it came ashore in the Florida Panhandle and Alabama. A below-average season is a statistic, not a shield.