Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center expect slightly fewer storms than average during the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season. But abnormally warm water in the Atlantic makes it more likely that at least one very large, destructive hurricane will form.

Tens of millions of people live in places that are threatened by flooding from heavy hurricane-driven rain, wind damage and coastal storm surge. The states at risk from hurricanes include large swaths of the eastern and southern U.S., including inland areas in Appalachia and the Northeast.

The official 2026 forecast calls for 8 to 14 storms in the Atlantic between June 1 and November 30. The average number of storms for an Atlantic hurricane season is 14.

Of the storms that form, 3 to 6 are expected to be full-blown hurricanes, which have higher wind speeds than tropical storms. One to 3 of those are forecast to be major hurricanes, which have winds powerful enough to bring down trees and power poles, remove shingles from roofs and destroy some mobile homes.

“Even though we’re expecting a below-average season in the Atlantic, it’s very important to understand that it only takes one,” says Neil Jacobs, who leads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We have had major hurricanes make landfall during below-average seasons.”

And even relatively weak storms have the potential to cause deadly flooding far from the coast, as recent storms have made devastatingly clear. States in the southeast are still recovering from Hurricane Helene, which no longer packed hurricane-strength winds when it arrived in Appalachia in 2024, but nonetheless caused massive flooding. In 2021, flash-flooding killed dozens of people in the Midatlantic and Northeast, thousands of miles from where Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana.

“The impacts don’t stop at the coast,” says National Weather Service director Ken Graham. “The impacts go way inland. And we’ve seen that over and over and over again, including most of the fatalities end up being inland as well.”

Climate change is making hurricanes more dangerous

Not every storm that forms makes landfall. Last year, the contiguous U.S. got lucky and didn’t see any hurricanes, even as some of the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded formed in the Atlantic and Caribbean.

Those powerful storms, including a massive Category 5 hurricane that hit Jamaica, show the effects of climate change. As the Earth gets hotter, large, powerful storms are getting more likely, even though the total number of storms that form is not increasing.

That’s in part because the oceans have absorbed most of the extra heat trapped by planet-warming pollution from burning oil, gas and coal. Sea surface temperatures are abnormally high in the part of the Atlantic where hurricanes are born. There is also abnormally warm water closer to the U.S. coast, where storms gather strength before hitting land.

At the press conference announcing this season’s hurricane outlook, lead federal hurricane forecaster Matthew Rosencrans noted that the water in the Gulf of Mexico, which the Trump administration refers to as the Gulf of America, is abnormally warm, as it was last year.

A warmer atmosphere can also hold more moisture, which then falls as rain when a storm hits land. For example, Hurricane Harvey dropped about 15% more rain than it would have without human-caused climate change when it hit Texas in 2017, researchers found.

This year, a strong El Niño is also expected to take hold midway through hurricane season. In general, the cyclic phenomenon tamps down hurricane activity in the Atlantic, because it causes wind conditions that disrupt storms. However, El Niño does nothing to disrupt storms that form in the Pacific. Federal forecasters are expecting an above-average number of storms in the central and eastern Pacific this year.

The federal government’s top disaster agency is in turmoil

For at least a decade, officials from FEMA have attended the hurricane forecast announcement in May, to provide information about how the public should prepare for hurricane season.

Last year, however, no one from FEMA attended.

This year, FEMA was back. Robert Ashe, the Acting Administrator for FEMA’s Southeast region attended the announcement, and stressed the importance of preparing for hurricanes early. That includes helping elderly family members and neighbors, he said.

Emergency experts also recommend reviewing your evacuation plan if you live on the coast, including plans for pets and for medical devices that rely on electricity. Those in hurricane-prone areas should learn whether local rivers are likely to flood during heavy rain and review how to use electrical generators and other equipment in safe ways.

“After a storm is not the time to read how to use your chainsaw for the first time,” says weather service director Ken Graham.

When a hurricane makes landfall, local emergency agencies for the town, county and state are the first to respond, and generally have the most up-to-date information about shelters, evacuation routes and power outages.

But in the days and weeks after a storm, the federal government has a huge role to play, coordinating search and rescue operations, helping local officials manage volunteers and debris removal work, and getting money to survivors for immediate needs such as diapers, food and clothing.

However, FEMA is limping into this hurricane season following a year of job cuts, funding uncertainty and outright existential threats from the Trump administration. The President repeatedly called for the agency to be eliminated last year, left the agency without a permanent leader, and cut thousands of workers who directly help disaster survivors.

In the last month, the administration appears to have changed its strategy, however. Job cuts stopped in May, according to an internal FEMA memo obtained by NPR. The administration nominated Cameron Hamilton, who was fired from the agency a year ago for saying it should still exist, and installed a longtime FEMA employee in the number two position at the agency. And, in recent weeks, FEMA released hundreds of millions of dollars in long-delayed funding for disaster recovery and preparedness projects across the country.

Still, it’s unclear how the turmoil over the last year will affect FEMA’s readiness to respond to hurricanes this year. The agency has not rehired all of the workers it lost, and dozens of seasoned emergency officials have left.

“FEMA is fully prepared for the 2026 hurricane season,” according to an emailed statement from an agency spokesperson in response to questions from NPR.