an eye-opening hurricane record was set in the Pacific. Yesterday morning, the 2026 Eastern Pacific hurricane season became the most intense on record, based on data going back to 1949. Meteorologists use a metric called Accumulated Cyclone Energy (or ACE), a stat that measures the total energy produced by tropical storms and hurricanes over a given period, accounting for both how strong they were and how long they lasted, to determine this.
Thanks to Hurricane Simon, a major Category 3 storm that is currently scraping Mexico’s West Coast, this year’s Eastern Pacific (or E Pac, as our meteorologists say) season has now had 319.2 units of ACE, breaking the previous record of 318, which was set in 2018. If you’ve been paying attention, it won’t surprise you to learn that this is due to the super El Niño we’re currently experiencing, which has led to much more active eastern and central Pacific hurricane seasons than usual, while also leading to the subdued Atlantic hurricane season we’ve seen.
By the way, the remnants of two of those Pacific storms are going to continue causing impacts in the U.S. this week. Simon’s remnants may stream into the central U.S. later in the week, while the remains of Hurricane Rachel are still dumping rain in the Southwest and have already brought over 12 inches of snow to parts of Montana
