The Pacific is churning with hurricanes. The Atlantic is quiet. Blame El Niño

It's been an extreme hurricane season in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans — but for vastly different reasons.

The Pacific Ocean has seen 18 hurricanes so far and 41 named storms overall, which are unusually high numbers for this point in the season.

Climate El Niño is here, so what does it mean? The Atlantic Ocean is experiencing the exact opposite.

For the first time in over 100 years, no full-blown hurricanes have formed in the Atlantic as of September 25. Only seven named storms have formed, all of which were less-intense tropical storms.

"It's a tale of two basins," says Gabriel Vecchi, a professor of geosciences at Princeton University. "The Pacific: incredibly active. The North Atlantic: incredibly inactive."