By Matt Rooney
Another hurricane season, another inconvenient encounter between climate alarmism and Mother Nature, Save Jerseyans:
As of mid-September, the Atlantic hasn’t produced a single hurricane.
Five named storms — Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly and Edouard — have formed, but none reached hurricane strength. NOAA’s latest tally puts Atlantic Accumulated Cyclone Energy, or “ACE,” at just 4.4 — 93% below the 1991–2020 normal for this point in the season.
It’s an extraordinary statistic considering how routinely Americans are told that “climate change” means increasingly ferocious hurricane seasons.
This year?
Crickets.
The Atlantic has now gone later without producing its first hurricane than any season of the modern satellite era. In fact, you have to go all the way back to 1941 to find a season that remained hurricane-free this late.
Meteorologists have a perfectly reasonable explanation: a powerful El Niño is producing atmospheric conditions hostile to Atlantic hurricane formation, particularly increased wind shear.
And that’s precisely the point.
Climate and weather are complicated. Ocean temperatures matter. So do wind patterns, atmospheric moisture, El Niño, La Niña and countless interacting variables. A hurricane making landfall isn’t automatically proof of climate change any more than an unusually quiet hurricane season disproves it.
Yet somehow that intellectual humility usually disappears whenever there’s a major storm.
A bad hurricane? Climate change.
A heat wave? Climate change.
Flooding? Climate change.
Wildfires? You guessed it.
But when hurricane activity runs 93% below normal, suddenly we’re reminded — correctly! — that short-term weather patterns aren’t the same thing as long-term climate trends.
Funny how that works.
The season isn’t over. It officially runs through November 30th, and hurricanes could still develop. Nobody should confuse an unusually quiet September with a guarantee that coastal communities are out of danger.
But 2026 should nevertheless provide another useful lesson: weather stubbornly refuses to behave like a political talking point.
Maybe the people demanding trillions of dollars and sweeping changes to how Americans drive, heat their homes and power the economy should demonstrate a little more humility about predicting it.
