Earthquake Weather: WeatherTiger Weekly Hurricane Column for June 10th
The earth shifts, but the skies remain mostly quiet in week 2 of hurricane season.
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Ten days deep in Hurricane Season 2026, earthquakes have sprung to an unprecedented 1-0 lead over tropical cyclones in impacts on Florida and the Gulf Coast. And while by historical standards, a whole lotta shakin’ may have been going on this week, there is no indication that tropical activity is poised to send out any shock waves in the near future.
However, the Atlantic, Gulf, and Caribbean are not completely quiet today, and there is a modicum of a chance that a tropical depression or weak tropical storm briefly forms over the next 7 days. The National Hurricane Center’s Atlantic Tropical Weather Outlook, issued each six hours between May 15 and November 30, as of Wednesday morning has added an area of interest to the outlook map for the first time in 2026. Fortunately, that region is the far southwest corner of the Gulf, and the NHC is only giving a 10% chance of formation by the end of the weekend. (These outlooks tend to be accurate; last year, a disturbance with a 10% seven-day forecast chance of development became a tropical depression or storm about 15% of the time.1)
Right now, the Atlantic disturbance to watch is neither in the Atlantic nor a disturbance; rather, it is the Eastern Pacific’s Tropical Depression Cristina. Cristina, which has been straddling the line between a tropical depression and weak tropical storm for a few days as it moves little south of Central America, should drift northwest over Guatemala and southern Mexico Thursday and Friday. If anything is left of Cristina, it could move across the southwestern Gulf over the weekend, potentially having a day or two back over the water to have an outside shot at reorganizing. A ridge of high pressure over the Lower Mississippi Valley will keep Cristina’s leftovers hustling west-northwest towards the Mexican Gulf Coast through Sunday, so there is no risk to the U.S. coast.
Eventually, after the disturbance rounds the western flank of the ridge over Mexico, its residual moisture will get pulled back east across the U.S. southern tier early next week by an approaching front. That should kick off a much-needed uptick in rain chances for the Gulf Coast and Florida by the end of the weekend, which will continue into late next week. Most of the Southeast is running anywhere from an 8-12” rainfall deficit over the last six months, on top of pre-existing severe long-term drought, so anything helps— particularly in the form of disorganized moisture rather than a named storm. Otherwise, there are no indications of any other tropical threats or notable disturbances through mid-June, with wind shear over the Gulf and Caribbean likely to remain brisk for the next 10 days.
While strong wind shear over the Gulf is typical in El Nino years (look for a deeper dive on El Nino next week), usually those shearing forces don’t extend all the way to the rocks of the Gulf’s oceanic crust. And yet, on Monday, even those rocks did move, unleashing an curiously strong magnitude 6.1 earthquake centered near western Cuba, just north of the Yucatan Channel. That’s one of the strongest earthquakes ever noted in the Gulf, which tends to be pretty inactive geologically as it is away from the tumultuous boundaries between tectonic plates.
Occasionally, strain within brittle rock plates slowly builds up well away from a boundary. That energy is released as an earthquake, which in this case cause in the unnerving tremor felt across much of Florida, the strongest observed in the state since Earthquake: The Ride at Universal Studios closed. Without a nearby boundary where two plates are colliding or subducting, those rock stresses won’t likely rebuild quickly, so don’t expect a repeat of Florida’s Earthquake of the Century. Also, myths to the contrary, there is no proven correlation between drought or heat and tectonic activity— no such thing as “earthquake weather,” other than today’s mood music, above.
On a final, rare-event-related note, the rest of the pre-season hurricane outlooks for 2026 have dribbled out over the last couple weeks following WeatherTiger’s updated forecast in late May. The consensus of these forecasts is in good agreement with our expectation of the 2026 hurricane season coming in somewhere around 20-50% less active than an average year. In fact, WeatherTiger’s real-time forecast for around 75 total units of Accumulated Cyclone Energy in 2026 is pretty much the average of all other regularly issued forecasts (76). Collectively, seasonal forecasters have issued the quietest outlooks for the year ahead since 2015, another powerful El Nino season. The spread between forecast groups is also fairly low, indicating a bit higher confidence than normal in a quiet outcome.
Of course, being confident in the prediction of a rare event is foolish, especially with 2026’s ultra-mega-El Nino poised to go to extremes like Billy Joel. As this week shows, the ground can shift under your feet when you least expect it, so despite the continued cause for cautious optimism in the Tropics, keep watching the skies.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/verification/pdfs/Verification_2025.pdf