Atlantic hurricane season 2025 sets record for latest first storm
A Season That Has Not Yet Begun
For the first time since aircraft began patrolling the Atlantic basin in 1944, not a single hurricane had formed by September 11. [1] That statement carries weight only when one understands what came before. Starting in 1944, the United States military began flying reconnaissance missions into tropical systems, transforming hurricane detection from a matter of chance into a matter of record. From that year forward, a hurricane had always formed by this date. Every single year. Until now.
The previous latest first hurricanes arrived in 2002, when Gustav formed, and in 2013, when Humberto finally appeared on September 11 itself. Those years felt anomalous at the time. They are now surpassed. The Atlantic hurricane database stretches back officially to 1851, though the earlier entries carry less certainty because storms developing far from land were spotted only if a ship happened to sail through them. Some systems surely escaped notice. Yet even with that caveat, every year back to 1851 records at least one Atlantic hurricane. The absolute latest first hurricane in that longer record came in 1941, when the season’s inaugural storm did not form until September 17.
This year has broken the pattern in a different way: it has broken nothing yet, because nothing has formed. The traditional peak of Atlantic hurricane activity arrives around September 10. That date has passed. Sea surface temperatures in the tropics typically reach their warmest around this time, and with a cooperative atmosphere, tropical systems should develop with relative ease. Instead, the main development region is choked with Saharan dust and wind shear. The dust, carried westward from Africa, suppresses the moist updrafts that hurricanes need. The shear, a difference in wind speed and direction at different altitudes, disrupts the vertical structure that a storm must build.
Forecasters Watching an Empty Ocean
The National Hurricane
Center is presently monitoring a single disturbance in the Atlantic. That system carries a “near zero” percent chance of becoming a tropical depression or storm during the next two days. The likelihood of it ever reaching hurricane strength is low. This is the actor on the stage right now: not a developing storm, but the absence of one, watched closely by forecasters who would normally be issuing advisories by this point in September.
Marshall Shepherd, a professor at the University of Georgia and a widely cited atmospheric scientist, has documented this quietude as historic, according to a University of Georgia release. [2] His assessment rests on the aircraft-era record beginning in 1944. Before that, a quiet stretch could simply mean a storm went unseen. After 1944, a quiet stretch means something real.
Coastal communities are not complaining. Landfalling hurricanes are incredibly destructive, tearing apart infrastructure and dumping rainfall far inland. Even storms that stay at sea, churning in the Gulf of Mexico, can send energy prices skyrocketing as offshore platforms shut down and refineries go dark. In a year already stretched thin, that is the last thing coastal residents need. The silence, however unusual, carries its own relief.
How Long the Quiet Must Last
The question that remains is not whether this season is unusual, but how long the unusualness must last to matter in the record books. The Atlantic will not produce a hurricane by the end of Thursday, according to the current forecast. [1] What happens after Thursday is not yet known. The single disturbance being tracked has almost no chance of developing into anything organized within two days, and its longer-term prospects are poor.
The 1941 season waited until September 17 for its first hurricane. That remains the latest first storm on record when the full historical database is considered. If the season passes that date without a hurricane, it will set a new mark, one that extends beyond the aircraft era into the longer, less certain record stretching back to 1851. Until then, the season sits in a strange middle ground: already historic by one measure, not yet historic by another. The dust and shear that have suppressed development so far show no immediate sign of relenting, and forecasters at the National Hurricane Center continue to watch the basin as the calendar moves toward the date that would rewrite the record.