The Atlantic has gone noticeably quiet this year, with a near-record El Nino shearing storms apart before they can organize. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now gives this storm season a 75 percent chance of finishing below normal, with as few as seven named storms.

That calm is a red herring for any community mistaking it for safety. The years between disasters are pivotal ones in which real protection can get planned and built, and this lull has arrived at the exact moment Washington is moving more of the disaster burden onto the states. States and local governments that treat 2026 as a reprieve will meet the next active storm season with a smaller federal backstop and nothing new in the ground to insulate themselves from their climate impacts.

My home state learned earlier this year how much the ground has shifted. In February, a blizzard buried parts of New Jersey under nearly 2 feet of snow and ultimately caused 15 deaths and nearly $100 million in damages statewide. The state requested $84 million in federal disaster assistance with support from both parties. Washington denied the request in July, and earlier this month the administration rejected Gov. Mikie Sherill’s appeal.

Set the politics aside, and the direction of federal policy is still unmistakable. The White House has said disaster aid exists to supplement what states are obligated to spend, and the president's Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council has recommended converting disaster programs into capped block grants that leave states carrying more of the cost, which researchers at the Urban Institute warn many states lack the fiscal capacity to absorb.

Insurance markets, meanwhile, are not waiting for landfall. Home insurance premiums are rising for a fifth consecutive year and have climbed 46 percent since 2021, roughly three times the pace of inflation, because insurers price a decade of exposure rather than a single season's forecast. The same logic is reaching public finance, where analysts warn that climate risk remains underpriced across the $4.2 trillion municipal bond market and that governments unable to show they are managing physical risk will eventually pay for it in their borrowing costs. None of that repricing pauses because one summer's storm count came in low.

I know what quiet years are worth because Hoboken spent them building. When Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012, I was a City Council member, and I watched the storm put 80 percent of our city underwater and knock out power for two weeks, leaving behind $110 million in damages. In the years that followed, first on the council and then while I was mayor, we used the calm seasons to deliver the Rebuild by Design Hudson River project, turning more than $230 million in federal recovery funding into flood protection barriers above ground and stormwater storage below it. Our ResilienCity Park now looks like an athletic field, community gathering space and playgrounds, yet beneath it sits a tank that holds 2 million gallons of stormwater, and when heavy rain hits Hoboken now, the city recovers within hours, not weeks.

Every piece of that system was designed and financed in years when no major storm was on the map, and the National Institute of Building Sciences has found that hazard mitigation returns as much as $13 for every $1 invested. Engineering firms are already marketing climate-resilient infrastructure, and investors are increasingly ready to finance it, so states that arrive with real projects will find capable partners.

The honest objection to all of this is fiscal. State budgets are stretched thin, and the concern here is that to a municipal finance officer watching forecasters lower their numbers all summer, new spending on protection can look like buying insurance against a risk that keeps shrinking. That reasoning confuses this season with the ones behind it. El Nino conditions typically fade within a year or two while ocean temperatures stay elevated, and forecasters keep repeating that a below-normal season can still produce a catastrophic landfall, because it only takes one major storm arriving onshore.

The deeper problem is that resilience cannot be purchased on short notice. Hoboken's parks and floodwalls took the better part of a decade to move from drawings to ribbon-cuttings, which means the protection a state wants in place for 2029 has to be started now, in the very season that makes it look unnecessary.

The useful question for governors and legislators is what their states will have built by the time the Atlantic turns tempestuous again. Washington has told the states, in policy and now in practice, that more of the burden belongs to them, and the forecast has handed them a rare season without interruptions. The states and their local governments that spend it lining up projects and financing will meet the next decade of storms on far better terms than those that simply enjoyed the weather.

Ravi Bhalla, a member of the New Jersey General Assembly, served as mayor of Hoboken between 2016 and 2026 and as a member of the City Council from 2009 to 2017.

Governing's opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing's editors or management.