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Our automated weather channel is on the air around the clock: the radar, the temperatures, the week ahead — and when a warning hits the Valley, it stays with the storm.
Quiet Tropics Now, but a Strong El Nino Points to a Wetter Valley Winter
Are there any tropical storms or hurricanes headed for the Gulf right now?
The National Hurricane Center's Wednesday outlook says no tropical cyclone formation is expected anywhere in the Atlantic, Caribbean or Gulf for the next seven days, so nothing is aimed at Columbus, Phenix City or the rest of the Chattahoochee Valley.
Photo: belen capello / Pexels
Stand on a dock at Lake Harding this week and the water that matters to you is 400 miles away in the Gulf. For now, there is nothing on it. The National Hurricane Center's outlook, issued Wednesday afternoon from Miami, covers the North Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf, and the entire forecast is one sentence: tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next seven days.
That is worth knowing here because the Chattahoochee Valley sits far enough inland that a Gulf system is only ever a concern once it exists and has a track. Right now there is nothing to track anywhere in the basin, and that covers us through the first week of November. The outlook runs seven days and no further, so it is a clean bill of health for the next week rather than a verdict on the rest of the season.
The bigger story for Columbus, Phenix City, Auburn and Opelika is on the other side of the continent. The equatorial Pacific is in a very strong El Nino, with the index at 2.16. When that stretch of ocean runs warm, it feeds energy into the subtropical jet stream, the fast river of air that steers storm systems across the southern United States. A stronger subtropical jet aims more of those systems directly at the Gulf South.
In the record, that has usually meant a wetter and often cooler cold season here, with more storm systems crossing the region and a raised risk of severe weather in the Gulf states. The Climate Prediction Center's outlook for November, December and January leans the same way, putting the odds of above-normal precipitation across our area at 60 percent, with temperatures closer to a normal winter than a warm or cold one. By February, March and April the signal fades, and forecasters give no tilt in any direction.
What that means in practical terms: the rain that fills West Point Lake, that runs off the Pine Mountain ridge at F.D. Roosevelt State Park, and that cuts a little deeper into the gullies at Providence Canyon near Lumpkin is more likely than not to show up in greater quantity between now and February. For anyone with a boat at Lake Eufaula or a garden in Hamilton or Cuthbert, a wetter-leaning winter is the working assumption, not a dry one.
It also means the storms that matter to this viewing area from here on generally arrive from the west, pushed along by that jet, rather than curling up from the south. Those systems move through on their own schedule, often after dark, and they do not come with the days of warning a hurricane gives you. If you have been relying on seeing something on the evening news, this is the season to turn on the alerts on your phone and put a weather radio somewhere you will hear it from the bedroom.
None of that is a forecast for any particular night. It is the shape of the season ahead, and it is the reason a quiet Hurricane Center outlook, satisfying as it is to read, is not the same thing as a quiet winter from Tuskegee to LaGrange.
Right now in Columbus, Georgia
77°Temperature
43°Dew point
30%Humidity
8 mphWind — northeast
30.17"Pressure
The next seven days
Day
High
Low
Rain
Conditions
TODAY
78°
54°
0%
Mostly Sunny
THU
81°
57°
0%
Mostly Sunny
FRI
82°
61°
0%
Partly Sunny
SAT
79°
60°
48%
Mostly Cloudy then Chance Rain Showers
SUN
71°
57°
57%
Rain Showers Likely
MON
76°
57°
13%
Partly Sunny
TUE
79°
60°
20%
Mostly Sunny
Written by the CNAW 2 weather desk from CNAW 2 weather desk data. Last updated October 28, 2026 at 5:37 PM Eastern. Covering Columbus and Phenix City, Auburn–Opelika, LaGrange, Eufaula and the rest of the 19-county CNAW viewing area.
