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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.
Tropics Go Quiet: No Atlantic or Gulf Storms Expected for Seven Days
Is any tropical storm or hurricane expected to form in the Gulf this week?
No — the National Hurricane Center expects no tropical development anywhere in the Atlantic, Caribbean or Gulf for the next seven days, so there is no tropical rain headed for Columbus or the rest of the Chattahoochee Valley.
Photo: Tomasz Filipek / Pexels
The National Hurricane Center's outlook, written in Miami and issued at 8 PM Friday, is one plain sentence: for the North Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf, tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next seven days. That covers the rest of October for Columbus, Phenix City, Eufaula and everywhere in between.
We live well inland, and it is easy to treat the tropics as somebody else's forecast. It isn't. Storms do not stop at the beach. A system that comes ashore on the Gulf coast loses its engine within hours, but it keeps the moisture it hauled north, and that moisture has to fall somewhere. That somewhere is often the kind of ground we have here, from the pine ridges above Hamilton and Manchester down through Lumpkin and Cuthbert to the Alabama line. When the Hurricane Center says nothing is forming for a week, it is telling you that the biggest single source of inland rain this time of year is switched off for now.
The Atlantic season runs through the end of November, so the book is not closed. But the calendar is working against development, and so is the Pacific. Sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are running far above normal right now, with the index at 2.16, a very strong El Niño. That pattern strengthens the subtropical jet stream straight across the southern United States, and strong upper-level winds spread across the Atlantic basin are hard on young tropical systems, which need a calm column of air to stack themselves up in.
The same jet stream is the reason your winter is likely to look different. The Climate Prediction Center gives this region a 60 percent chance of above-normal precipitation for November, December and January, with temperatures most likely near normal. In the historical record, a strong El Niño has usually meant a wetter and often cooler cold season along the Gulf South, with more storm systems crossing the area and a raised risk of severe weather in the Gulf states. For Auburn, Opelika, Tuskegee and LaGrange, the thing worth watching is no longer a storm with a name off Cuba. It is the parade of systems that tends to come at us from the west after New Year's.
A wetter cold season would also show up in the water. Over the seven days ending October 22, the Chattahoochee River in Columbus averaged 1,747 cubic feet per second at the 14th Street gauge, about 63 percent of the normal 2,770 for these dates, and below normal for this time of year. Farther down, below Lake Eufaula near Columbia, Alabama, it averaged 4,226 against a normal of 4,967, which is about where it should be, and Upatoi Creek near Columbus ran at 137 against 153. Because the dams at West Point and Eufaula release in pulses, those week-long averages are the only honest way to read the river.
So take the quiet. Stand on the RiverWalk at sunset, or on a dock at Lake Harding with the water flat, and enjoy a Gulf that has nothing to say. Then use the lull for the housekeeping nobody does in February: check that your phone will wake you up for a warning in the middle of the night.
Right now in Columbus, Georgia
52°Temperature
43°Dew point
72%Humidity
4 mphWind — north
30.27"Pressure
The next seven days
Day
High
Low
Rain
Conditions
TONIGHT
—
47°
0%
Clear
TODAY
74°
50°
0%
Sunny
SUN
75°
50°
0%
Sunny
MON
76°
45°
0%
Sunny
TUE
78°
47°
0%
Sunny
WED
77°
49°
2%
Mostly Sunny
THU
79°
50°
2%
Mostly Sunny
Written by the CNAW 2 weather desk from CNAW 2 weather desk data. Last updated October 24, 2026 at 1:42 AM Eastern. Covering Columbus and Phenix City, Auburn–Opelika, LaGrange, Eufaula and the rest of the 19-county CNAW viewing area.
