The first tropical wave of the 2026 hurricane season stumbled off the coast of Africa during the weekend, choking on dry Saharan air and at a latitude too low for it to be a concern anyone except possibly ships at sea.
It will be followed by scores more — as many as 65 tropical waves cartwheel into the Atlantic in a typical season — with only a fraction growing from an embryonic squall of thunderstorms to a tropical depression, storm or hurricane.
Still, it’s a sign that the June 1 start date of hurricane season is approaching and a reminder that the tropics are stirring even as a potential storm-squashing “super” El Niño forms.
Alex DaSilva, lead hurricane forecaster for AccuWeather, said it’s normal to start seeing tropical waves dip their toes in the main runway between Africa and the Caribbean in May.
“Typically, none of these will start to develop until July or even August,” DaSilva said. “They come across and go into South America or just croak.”
The National Hurricane Center tracks the waves for shipping concerns and to monitor for the occasional spin up that has higher ambitions. Those tend to become the big Cabo Verde hurricanes that travel the Atlantic east to west and have more options for routing, heading into the Gulf of Mexico, smacking the East Coast or wandering harmlessly off into the northern Atlantic.
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Early season hurricanes typically form close to home
In early summer, most storms form in the Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico as the atmosphere starts its seasonal windup, fomenting cyclones off stalled frontal boundaries or the Central American Gyre — an area of low pressure that can bookend hurricane season but is less active in summer months.
“It’s pretty rare for early season development to be from a tropical wave,” DaSilva said. “Can it happen? Yes, but it’s rare.”
Currently, he said there’s too much storm-shredding windshear in the main development region, and while sea surface temperatures are warm enough to support a storm, some areas are below normal, and most are just average.
“This wave is not going to be anything to watch,” said Andy Hazelton, an associate scientist at the University of Miami’s Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies.
Tropical waves are products of the mid-level African Easterly Jet. The jet, a swift-moving ribbon of winds, creates undulations in the air also known as African easterly waves, which are seeds for hurricanes.
If the National Hurricane Center believes a tropical wave has the potential to become a tropical cyclone — a depression, storm or hurricane — it will note it in the Tropical Weather Outlook with a low, medium or high chance of formation.
‘Super’ El Niño almost a certainty this hurricane season
This hurricane season is forecast to be marked by an El Niño climate pattern, which is associated with stronger bouts of wind shear that work to cut the heads off budding storms.
Two leading hurricane forecasts are predicting near normal to slightly below normal hurricane activity. Colorado State University and AccuWeather both noted El Niño as a factor in their forecasts.
Hazelton said there’s no reason at this point to expect anything other than a very strong or ‘super’ El Niño, and the stronger the El Niño the more storm shredding muscle.
“There’s so much subsurface heat in the Pacific it’s on par with 1997, which is one of the strongest El Niños that we’ve had,” Hazelton said. “It looks like everything is lining up for a pretty big El Niño event.”
He cautions, however, that damaging hurricanes have and will happen during El Niño years.
“We don’t want people to let their guard down because you just never know,” Hazelton said. “There are areas where you can still get pockets of favorable conditions.”
Hurricane Center tropical outlooks begin May 15
In 2021, the National Hurricane Center moved up its start date on when it begins issuing its Tropical Weather Outlooks, which come out four times a day. Until that year, the outlooks began on June 1, the official start date of hurricane season.
But after six consecutive years of tropical cyclones forming ahead of June 1, the NHC began issuing them May 15, which is also the beginning of the hurricane season in the Pacific.
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Ken Graham, who was director of NHC at the time and is now the director of the National Weather Service, said more climatological data and social science information would be needed before any changes would be made to the June 1-to-November 30 storm season calendar.
Since the change to May 15, no early season storms have formed, except an unusual unnamed subtropical storm that was born Jan. 16, 2023 and fizzled the next day.
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Kimberly Miller is a journalist for the USA TODAY NETWORK FLORIDA. She covers weather, the environment and critters as the Embracing Florida reporter. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY, at palmbeachpost.com/newsletters.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: First tropical wave of 2026 hurricane season forms. What does it mean?
Reporting by Kimberly Miller, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Palm Beach Post
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