Four ex-typhoons have reached Alaskan waters this year, more than 1997 or 2015

Four former typhoons have now swept into Alaskan waters in 2026, and that tally is already one better than the three recorded in either 1997 or 2015. Champi, the latest, arrived in late October after crossing the Bering Sea, joining Bang-Lang, Dujuan and Choi-wan on a list that no earlier year has matched.

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None of the four arrived as a typhoon. Champi’s path shows the usual sequence: the storm undergoes extratropical transition, losing its tropical structure over cooler water. Alaska has absorbed the leftovers of roughly 60 such systems since 1970, so the state is used to the pattern. The pace in 2026 is what is new.

The four ex-typhoons and the years they are measured against

NASA’s Earth Observatory named the four in a Nov. 3 feature on the Pacific storm season: Bang-Lang in August, Dujuan in September, Choi-wan in early October and Champi at the end of the month. Rick Thoman, a climatologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, pointed out that the autumns of 1997 and 2015, both strong El Niño years, each saw three ex-typhoons reach Alaskan waters, which makes 2026 the first year to reach four in that comparison.

The counting threshold matters here. NASA’s wording is that Champi was the fourth ex-typhoon to enter Alaskan waters, not the fourth to cause damage, so the record concerns how often these remnants reach the region rather than how much harm each does. By that yardstick the year has produced one more event than the earlier years in Thoman’s comparison, and the season is not yet over.

Champi’s path from a 185-mph typhoon to a Bering Sea gale

Champi began its life far from Alaska. AccuWeather reported that it reached 185 mph, tied with Sinlaku for the strongest winds of any tropical cyclone on Earth this year, and passed within about 12 miles of Guam on Oct. 18. NASA’s Gary Partyka, a Goddard meteorologist, said the remnants likely merged with a mid-latitude storm already forming over the Bering Sea and helped strengthen it.

The forecast for western Alaska was specific. In KNOM’s coverage on Alaska Public Media, National Weather Service warning coordination meteorologist Jason Laney said such storms often grow over colder water and spread wind across a much wider area, with strong winds reaching 100 to 200 miles from the center. Hooper Bay could see water 2 to 4 feet above the normal high tide line, and Nome was forecast to get about 1.5 inches of rain.

The fall pattern had already disrupted life before Champi. Laney noted in the KNOM report that a storm the week before had canceled flights across Western Alaska and led some Kivalina residents to evacuate, and Nome and Kotzebue were told to expect high surf and coastal erosion from Champi itself. For coastal communities, each ex-typhoon arrives on top of whatever water the previous one left behind, so the sheer count matters beyond the record books.

El Niño as the likely driver

Partyka called the strong El Niño now under way a likely contributor to the busy Northwest Pacific. NASA’s account counts 25 named storms since Sinlaku reached super typhoon strength in April, and El Niño tends to steer such storms northward toward Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Japan and the Korean Peninsula before some curve toward the Bering Sea. Laney likewise described Champi as one in a series of fall storms fueled by a powerful El Niño.

The series was not finished when Champi went by. Meteored’s forecast listed more lows lined up behind it, with winter storm warnings for the Alaska Range, a winter weather advisory for Thompson Pass with 10 to 15 inches of snow, and a flood watch for the Southern Kenai Mountains. Laney said another low, possibly stronger than Champi, would enter the Bering Sea early the following week and might linger.

What 2026 has spared Alaska so far

Damage has stayed below the level of last year’s disaster. Former Typhoon Halong struck western Alaska on Oct. 11 and 12, 2025, causing severe flooding and damaging wind, mostly in the Kuskokwim Delta, and the University of Alaska’s climate center held a webinar led by Thoman and Ed Plumb on how rare a storm of that strength was in the eastern Bering Sea. NASA noted that Champi’s passage brought wind, rain and snow to some areas without Halong-scale destruction.

Thoman’s rough figure of 60 ex-typhoons since 1970 puts the 2026 pace in perspective. Averaged over more than five decades, the long-run rate is just over one a year, so four in a single autumn runs several times faster than the multi-decade norm, even as 1997 and 2015 show the pattern has appeared in El Niño years before.

That leaves a question the 2026 count cannot answer by itself: whether four ex-typhoons in one autumn is a warm-ocean, El Niño-driven outlier like 1997 and 2015, or a new floor. Thoman’s tally will be the benchmark if a fifth arrives before winter sets in.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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