David Nazario
•8/19/2026
El Niño is putting in work to keep our Atlantic basin suppressed. For a little while there, it looked like we may even have two, if not three, named storms out on the field simultaneously. While we're not anticipating amazing improvements out across the tropics, there are going to be a few windows of opportunity for something to start spinning. Even in the short-term, your Weather Authority is monitoring a tropical wave slated to come off Africa by next Monday, if not Tuesday at the very latest.
I do believe we see a new yellow tag on the NHC home page either by week's end or as we move through this upcoming weekend. Models are in near-unanimous agreement at least as it comes off Africa, it could take on further tropical characteristics. This is probably a pattern we'll have to track here at the Weather Authority over the next couple of months.
Usually we see conditions at their best for tropical development in the Atlantic as we move towards and just away from September 10th. While El Niño will ensure at least a level of hostility closer to the Caribbean and the Western Atlantic, off the coast of Africa things look to gear up for attempts at named storm formation.
Right away, if and when a wave or a disturbance organizes into something more, the general track they should take is north and out to sea. Usually during an El Niño phase in the Pacific, we see all that wind shear racing towards the east and northeast from Central America and into the Atlantic. That helps chisel out a weakness in our Atlantic high pressure that usually guides our tropical features westward. Think back to 2023 for a second. Outside of Idalia, every other storm made that turn north either at or just before the Lesser Antilles.
As we look into September, there's a couple of different variables we'll be watching at the WINK Weather Authority. The first is our Madden-Julian Oscillation. This is a zone of rising motion that tends to help things in the Atlantic get a bit more organized.
September and October is also when we see the return of a localized phenomenon called the Central America Gyre. The "CAG", for short, tends to build up over lower Mexico and portions of the Eastern Pacific, Bay of Campeche, and the Western Caribbean. The gyre could go on to produce a tropical system. The keyword here is "could"; it is far from absolute, and tricky to forecast if it does come together. There are signs of it trying to take shape deeper into the month of September as we look inside the next 30 days.
So while this has certainly been a slower season than we've seen in over a decade, I highly encourage that we don't take our foot off the throttle quite yet. Check back with us here at WINK at least every other day to stay ahead of whatever could be brewing in the tropics.
