I find it strange that a climate crisis can start in such a quiet way. There was no big news. There was no warning. There is only warm water slowly building up below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. This sets off a chain of events that will eventually cause streets to flood in Los Angeles, ice storms in Mississippi, and tornadoes along the Gulf Coast in the middle of winter.
That’s how things stand at the moment. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has confirmed that El Niño conditions are already present in the tropical Pacific. Now, weather forecasters are keeping an eye on what could become one of the strongest events ever recorded. NOAA thinks there is an 81% chance that a very strong El Niño will happen between October and December 2026. It will probably be strongest in late fall or early winter. There is a 97 percent chance that the event will last until early spring 2027, so this is more than just a seasonal worry.
Even though “super El Niño” is not an official NOAA term—they prefer “very strong”—some meteorologists have started using it, and it’s important to understand why. When ocean temperature differences in the central and eastern tropical Pacific are more than two degrees Celsius above the long-term average, the effects spread in ways that are hard to predict. People who work in emergency management still talk about the events that happened in 1982–1983, 1997–1998 and 2015–2016 as warning signs. The way things are going now makes comparisons to all three of those things feel uncomfortable.
What makes this episode worth paying close attention to is not just the temperatures on the surface, but also what is going on below them. Scientists from NOAA have found a large body of unusually warm water below the surface of the Pacific that is still feeding the system that is still growing. In response, patterns in the atmosphere are changing. For example, the wind is behaving differently across the tropical Pacific, which is a sign that the ocean and atmosphere are entering a cycle that reinforces each other. Things don’t usually go backwards quickly once that coupling gets tighter.
For the US, the effects will depend on where you live, but forecasters are careful not to overstate how precise they think they can be at this point in time. Especially Southern California and the Sierra Nevada tend to get hit hard by a stronger Pacific jet stream that brings strong winter storms inland. Dangers include heavy rain, flooding, and a lot of snow in the mountains. In other parts of the Gulf Coast and Southeast, the worry is a bit different: it will be wetter during the cool season, and there is a greater chance of severe weather, especially tornadoes.
A meteorologist at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center named Johnna Infanti said that the Gulf States, the Southeast, and the Mid-Atlantic have the best chance of getting above-normal rain. While this was going on, Mark Wiley of the National Weather Service said that the biggest risks for a strong event were flash flooding, river flooding, and a higher chance of tornadoes in the Deep South. Florida is especially likely to be hit by bad weather in the winter. Depending on how much cold air is available, New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire could get a lot of rain and snow.
Still, it’s not clear if this event will really be as bad as the one in 1997–98, which is still kind of a standard for really bad El Niño winters. Long-range forecasters at AccuWeather have said that other factors in the atmosphere will also play a part. Their full winter impact forecast won’t be available until October. That level of caution is smart. Patterns seen in the past are only suggestions; they are not promises. Also, no two El Niño events will be exactly the same. Even people who pay close attention to the atmosphere are sometimes surprised by it.
Still, seeing this happen in real time—the warming of the ground, the shifting winds, and the growing faith in weather models—makes it seem like the winter of 2026–2027 will be different. Emergency managers in states that are at risk are already paying attention. Water agencies in the West are changing how they work. More and more, it’s hard to ignore the signal from the Pacific. The months before the peak intensity will be very important.
