Below-Normal Hurricane Forecast Risks Complacency on a Coast Still Rebuilding

STUART — Federal forecasters this week declared the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season likely to be below normal, crediting a strengthening El Niño for what could be the quietest season in more than a decade. Emergency managers up and down the Treasure Coast have heard that before.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday issued its seasonal outlook, putting a 55% probability on a below-average season with eight to 14 named storms, three to six of potential hurricane strength, and one to three capable of reaching major status. A normal season produces 14 named storms and seven hurricanes.

The headline number looks reassuring. The fine print does not.

The same week NOAA issued its forecast, Gov. Ron DeSantis quietly renewed a state emergency declaration tied to Hurricane Milton — the 2024 Category 3 storm that made landfall near Sarasota — for another 60 days. The renewal, signed Thursday, states plainly that communities struck by Milton "are still recovering" and continue to require state support. Without the extension, the declaration would have expired Saturday.

That is not the posture of a region that has put a hurricane behind it.

Colorado State University, which pioneered seasonal hurricane forecasting in 1984, is predicting the lowest overall Atlantic cyclone activity since 2015 — itself the strongest El Niño year in 75 years. CSU hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach said that forecast is likely to be revised even lower in June. Eighteen forecasting groups, private and academic, have converged on similar numbers: roughly a dozen named storms, five becoming hurricanes, two reaching major intensity.

Nine of the past 10 Atlantic hurricane seasons were above normal or hyperactive, Klotzbach noted. Last year alone produced a near-record three Category 5 storms.

"It only takes one," said University at Albany atmospheric scientist Kristen Corbosiero. "It only takes one to cause real devastation and destruction in the mainland U.S. or even in Hawaii."

That warning lands with particular weight on the Treasure Coast.

Local emergency management directors in Martin, St. Lucie, and Indian River counties [NEEDS VERIFICATION — specific officials not reached by press time] are the frontline decision-makers who determine staffing levels, shelter readiness, and public outreach budgets heading into June 1. Whether a below-normal national forecast translates into reduced preparation at the county level is precisely the question that needs answering before the season opens — not after a named storm forms in the Gulf.

NOAA's own experts flagged the complacency risk directly. "We hope people don't become complacent," the agency said in announcing the forecast — an unusual editorial note in what is typically a clinical statistical release.

The underlying climate dynamic driving the forecast is El Niño, a cyclic warming of parts of the central Pacific that produces atmospheric wind shear across the Atlantic, essentially tearing apart developing storms before they can organize. "The elephant in the room," Columbia University climate scientist Suzana Camargo called it.

But El Niño's suppressive effect is probabilistic, not a guarantee. A storm that develops at the right latitude, at the right moment, in the right atmospheric pocket can still intensify rapidly and make landfall with devastating speed — as Milton itself demonstrated when it underwent rapid intensification in the Gulf before striking the Florida coast in 2024.

The financial stakes are not abstract. Insurance giant Munich Re tracks inflation-adjusted global tropical cyclone damage, and the numbers are stark: an average of $11.4 billion annually in the 1980s has grown to $109.7 billion a year over the past decade, with three-quarters of that damage occurring in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean.

For residents in Martin, St. Lucie, and Indian River counties still navigating insurance claims, blue-tarp rooflines, and delayed federal reimbursements from Milton [NEEDS VERIFICATION — specific local damage and recovery figures], the NOAA forecast is not a green light. It is a statistical distribution. And the Treasure Coast has spent enough years inside the cone of uncertainty to know the difference.

Calls to Martin County Emergency Management, St. Lucie County Emergency Management, and Indian River County Emergency Management were not returned by publication time. [NEEDS VERIFICATION — confirm contact attempts and responses before final publication.]

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