Photo: NASA
Statistically, September 10 is the height of the Atlantic Hurricane season. During and around this date, high sea surface temperatures provide energy for tropical storms to form and intensify, and forecasters had expected this 2025 season to be more active than normal.
As recently as early August, forecasters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that this season was on track for “above normal” storm activity, predicting 13-18 named storms (with winds of 39 mph or greater), of which 5-9 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or greater), including 2-5 major hurricanes (winds of 111 mph or greater).
This September, however, saw what seems like an anomaly. The September 10 date came and went without any named storms to start the month and nothing of note in the immediate forecast. On September 7, the National Weather Service said they weren’t seeing any activity “during the next 7 days,” adding that making it to September 14 without any named storms “would be the farthest into September without a named storm developing since 1992 (Bonnie on Sept. 18th).”
For Atlantic surfers, the last storm to march to the East Coast was Erin, which produced all-time swell for the U.S. and historic and rare XXL surf in Europe. That was a historically large storm that crossed the Atlantic through most of August, beginning on August 11, 2025 and wrapping up August 28, 2025.
“Since 1851, only 2 years did not record a storm formation in September (1879 and 1890),” they wrote.
The next named storm this season will be Gabriel, which will be the seventh of the season whenever it does form. On September 11, NWS forecasters said they were monitoring a potential storm forming in the Atlantic to the west of Africa. Its development could be around a week out, however.
“Most of the various models we look at … have become fairly bullish on development of this system about a week from now,” Houston-based meteorologist Matt Lanza said. “There is surprisingly good agreement among several of these models, and their ensembles, about where the disturbance will be by the middle of next week” ‒ namely, about smack-dab in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
So, after a recent quiet stretch during peak hurricane season, institutions like Accuweather, for example, are updating their predictions for the remainder of this season. Their new prediction is 13-16 named storms, 6-9 hurricanes, 3-5 major hurricanes (matches their original prediction), and 3-6 “direct U.S. impacts” (also the same).
