Quiet 2026 hurricane season forecast, risk remains for builders

The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season is underway, and despite predictions of a quieter year, experts are urging the housing industry not to ease up on storm-resilient building.

NOAA’s 2026 outlook calls for 8–14 named storms, 3–6 hurricanes, and 1–3 major hurricanes. That follows 2025, the first season since 2015 in which no hurricane made U.S. landfall. Two consecutive slow seasons can breed a dangerous sense of normalcy among builders and developers making long-term infrastructure decisions.

Last year’s quiet season still delivered real consequences. Tropical Storm Chantal made landfall in South Carolina, flooding coastal communities, and offshore storms generated large swells that accelerated coastal erosion along the Outer Banks. A season without a major landfall is not a season without risk.

Patrick Chopson, principal architect with Atlanta-based firm Cove, told The Builder’s Daily that developers and builders may be tempted to dismiss the threat during a slower season.

“But I always tell people, Indiana University won a football championship this year, and we got the New York Knicks in the NBA finals,” Chopson said. “You should really expect the impossible.”

In its May 30 forecast, global engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti warned that a “below-normal forecast does not eliminate risk for individual buildings, portfolios, campuses, or critical facilities.”

What the forecast shows

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center has issued an El Nino Watch. NOAA projects an 82% chance that El Nino conditions will develop during the May–July period, increasing wind shear over the Atlantic basin and suppressing storm development.

Currently, the climate sits in an El Nino-Southern Oscillation-neutral phase – commonly known as ENSO-neutral – the transitional window between La Nina and the anticipated El Nino emergence.

“The weather patterns are going to be all strange in 2026, and they’re supercharged by climate change,” Chopson said.

Forecasters caution that ENSO-neutral periods carry their own unpredictability. The atmospheric brakes that suppress Atlantic hurricane activity have not fully engaged.

History bears out potential threat

The 1992 Atlantic hurricane season offers the starkest warning. El Nino conditions were developing, and the season produced only six named storms. Then came Andrew.

Hurricane Andrew made landfall in South Florida on Aug. 24, 1992, as a catastrophic Category 5. It killed 65 people and caused more than $27 billion in damage, exceeding $60 billion in today’s dollars. Andrew leveled entire communities in Miami-Dade County and remains one of the costliest landfalling hurricanes in U.S. history.

Andrew’s destruction produced one lasting policy response. Florida overhauled its building codes, adopting some of the most stringent hurricane construction standards in the nation. The 2001 Florida Building Code mandated stronger roof-to-wall connections, impact-resistant windows, and higher wind-load requirements – reforms credited with meaningfully reducing structural damage in subsequent storms.

Chopson said that conditions this season structurally resemble those of 1992.

Don’t confuse quiet with safe

Emergency management officials and housing policy advocates are pushing back against any easing of resilience investment. Consecutive above-normal seasons had pushed many state and local governments to accelerate storm-resistant building codes and coastal infrastructure upgrades. A quieter forecast could stall that momentum.

Chopson said investors in markets like New Orleans face near-certain exposure to a catastrophic weather event within a standard 10-year multifamily hold period – risk that visibly suppresses development activity in the area. But he warned that the threat extends well beyond obvious danger zones, noting that lower-lying areas east and south of Tampa fall into an extreme-risk category many investors overlook.

“The bottom line is, if you’re not pricing the risk in appropriately for your particular location, you can be off by two times what the actual risk is,” Chopson said. “A lot of your large insurers have pulled out of Florida because they’re running the actual math.”

For builders, Chopson’s math carries a direct warning: the forecast may be quieter, but the exposure is not.