2026 Hurricane Season To Lean Below Average

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A clash of the seasons will be on display midweek with a juxtaposition between hurricane season and wintry weather occurring at the same time in the Lower 48, but that's not as unusual as it might sound.

Francine tracks inland as the West sees a colder pattern develop. Francine will spread heavy rain and gusty winds through the South as a pattern change unfolds in the West. A cold, southward-plunging jet stream over the Mountain West means parts of the northern Rockies above 7,000 feet in elevation will see snowfall by late Wednesday night, continuing through Thursday.

Y​ou can see this dichotomy of weather in the forecast model depiction of precipitation on Thursday:

The changing weather conditions of fall can make this happen. While this week's snowfall is confined to just higher-elevation areas of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, in recent years, we've seen more formidable examples of winter storms ongoing while a tropical cyclone is impacting the U.S.

Those more extreme examples are likely to happen at the end of hurricane season, when it overlaps with a fall snowstorm, but it's also happened when hurricane season starts early and a late-spring snowstorm is still on the map.

Here are a few examples from the past when winter and hurricane seasons clashed:

N​ovember 2022:​ A winter storm named Alejandra by The Weather Channel brought heavy snow and blizzard conditions to the Northern Plains while Hurricane Nicole made landfall in Florida on Nov. 10.

October 2020: In the last week of October 2020, snow fell as far south as Midland, Texas, and a crippling ice storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands in Oklahoma, including the Oklahoma City metro area – all while Hurricane Zeta was hammering Louisiana and the Southeast.

Mother's Day Weekend 2015: Virtually everything but the kitchen sink weatherwise occurred. The satellite image below from May 10, 2015, shows Winter Storm Venus affecting the Northern Plains as Tropical Storm Ana made landfall in South Carolina. In between, severe thunderstorms packing tornadoes and flash flooding hit the South.

Superstorm Sandy in October 2012: It's one thing to have an ongoing snowstorm somewhere else when a tropical cyclone is making landfall; it's another for the tropical cyclone itself to initiate a snowstorm.

Yes, Sandy was "officially" no longer a tropical cyclone as it roared ashore in New Jersey in late October 2012.

However, this former hurricane produced an epic snowstorm in the Appalachians, where the air was just cold enough when intercepted by Sandy's moisture.

Up to 3 feet of snow fell in the Appalachians of West Virginia and North Carolina. Some roofs collapsed due to the weight of the wet, heavy snow in parts of West Virginia.

Chris Dolce has been a senior meteorologist with weather.com for over 10 years after beginning his career with The Weather Channel in the early 2000s.