Four words from an official White House account set off a day of online mockery on Sunday, September 13, 2026, after the administration’s rapid response operation appeared to credit President Donald Trump for an Atlantic Ocean that has yet to produce a hurricane this year.
The Rapid Response 47 account on X quote-posted a message from meteorologist Chris Martz, who has described himself as the “anti-Greta Thunberg.” Martz wrote that “history has been made” because “no hurricanes have formed in the North Atlantic Ocean so far this year.” The White House account’s entire contribution: “Thank you, President Trump!”
No explanation followed for how a president might influence conditions over the tropical Atlantic. Readers drew their own conclusions.
Meteorologists and Comedians Pile On
Meteorologist Ryan Scholl pushed back: “Actually the president has absolutely nothing to do with zero hurricanes in the Atlantic so far this year. Hope this helps!” An account posting as InkyWX noted that the same logic would make the president answerable for the 2017 hurricane season. “I had to double check to make sure this wasn’t a parody account,” wrote Josh Schwerin. Drew Savicki added: “It would be a major scandal if the Biden White House posted something like this.”
The post was likened to North Korean dear leader worship, and users joked about “Kim Jong-Donald.” The parody account The Tweet Of God replied: “Welp, I’m out of jokes.”
El Niño, Not the Oval Office
The Atlantic has not been empty, only hurricane-free. Five tropical storms have formed this season, none of them reaching hurricane strength. The most recent, Edouard, soaked parts of eastern Texas with as much as 2 feet of rain. Bertha, in late July, was the only one to survive more than about a day, in the Gulf.
The wait has been historic. With nothing on the immediate horizon, 2026 is set to smash the satellite-era record for the longest delay before a season’s first Atlantic hurricane; the previous record-late date was September 11, set in both 2013 and 2002. As of September 10, measured by accumulated cyclone energy — a yardstick that weighs how long storms last and how strong they get — it was the slowest start to a season since at least 1966, the first year of routine satellite coverage of the basin. The index sat where a typical season sits in the second week of July, not the second week of September, historically the busiest stretch of the year.
The reason is atmospheric, not political. An intensifying El Niño has been by far the largest contributor, driving up the wind shear that shreds storms before they can organize. Across the stretch of ocean running from the Caribbean out to waters near Africa’s western shores, shear readings since July have topped anything on record for the same calendar date in data reaching back to 1979, said Phil Klotzbach, a tropical scientist at Colorado State University. Five experts told The Associated Press that developing systems are being decapitated by wind, starved by dry air and pressed down from above — textbook El Niño effects. University at Albany atmospheric science professor Kristen Corbosiero said conditions in the basin are exceptionally hostile to anything trying to become a tropical cyclone. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which had already forecast a below-normal season, says El Niño typically tamps down Atlantic activity by boosting vertical wind shear.
On September 10 there were no active tropical storms or hurricanes anywhere in the basin, and the National Hurricane Center had flagged no areas for possible development over the next seven days. As of September 13, forecasters said none was expected for at least another week. Hurricane Center data shows the season running two named storms, three hurricanes and one major hurricane behind the 1991-2020 averages for this point in the year. Only twice since World War II, in 1994 and 1962, has a September passed without an Atlantic hurricane.
A Court Ruling Two Days Earlier
The thank-you landed two days after a federal court dealt the administration a loss on disaster policy. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, a President Bill Clinton appointee on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, found that the administration broke the law when it moved to cut the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workforce by roughly half, from about 23,000 employees to roughly 11,500, and to block the renewal of hundreds of temporary disaster-response workers. In a 32-page order, she held that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had improperly seized control of FEMA’s personnel decisions and had broken post-Katrina rules written to keep the agency independent inside the department.
Federal employee unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees, brought the case. They allege that then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other department officials wrongly took over staffing calls that belonged to FEMA. Illston ordered no remedies or penalties, directing the parties to file jointly by October 9, with a ruling on relief to follow. Trump has called for FEMA to be abolished and says states should shoulder more of the work of responding to disasters.
None of that means the Atlantic is finished for the year. The season runs through November 30, and AccuWeather’s lead hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva, said the unfavorable conditions were expected to last the rest of the season, through November, which could keep overall activity down. AccuWeather has tied the quiet partly to wind shear and dry-air plumes carried on Saharan dust. A slow season is not a safe one: it takes a single landfall, or one crawling, flood-producing tropical storm, to define a year. Experts point to 1992, a season that started late and produced the devastating Hurricane Andrew.