At 5pm Eastern, TD5 is located just off the central Louisiana coast and is forecast to track northwest toward the Houston area on Tuesday as it slowly intensifies.
Even if it does briefly reach tropical storm intensity on Tuesday, it has little time before landfall, so flooding rain will be the primary threat. Fortunately, the depression is very small, so impacts such as storm surge and heavy rain are also going to be fairly limited in scope.
The remnants of Tropical Storm Dolly are near the northern coast of Hispaniola and barely discernible. The odds of regeneration have decreased drastically in the past day, but the disturbance will travel toward the Bahamas and then Florida the rest of the week, bringing heavy rain with it.
Looking at where the season stands relative to climatology as we wrap up August, the Accumulated Cyclone Energy is 10% of average. In terms of storm counts, there have been 4 named storms, 0 hurricanes, and 0 major hurricanes. The average by now is 6, 2, and 1. By any measure, this is an incredibly slow start to a season, and with a strong El Niño developing, Atlantic activity should remain suppressed for the remainder of the season. However, "suppressed" doesn't mean zero... just less than average. We are in the heart of the season and need to remain vigilant.
In terms of ACE, the hurricane seasons since 1950 that had a slower start than 2026 were 2022, 1988, 1984, 1977, and 1967. 2022 and 1988 were during a La Niña, 1984 was fairly neutral but headed into La Niña. 1977 was a weak El Niño, and 1967 was neutral. So 2026 is the only one among these that is a strong El Niño.
If you're curious if there has ever been a season without any hurricanes, the answer is yes, at least that we know of. In the historical record which extends back to 1851, the only years with no hurricanes were 1914 and 1907. Inspecting their ENSO phases, 1914 was a strong El Niño and 1907 was neutral.
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