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El Niño has officially arrived, the National Weather Service declared Thursday, bringing with it a greater chance of lots of rain in Southern California this winter.
The climate pattern developed over the last month and is expected to continue to strengthen, with the weather service’s Climate Prediction Center assessing a 63% chance of a “very strong” El Niño later this year that would rank among the most powerful on record since 1950.
A very strong El Niño “more significantly tilts the odds towards wetter-than-normal conditions here in Southern California,” Ariel Cohen, a meteorologist at the weather service’s Oxnard office, said during a briefing Thursday at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.
Oceanic conditions have rapidly changed in recent months, giving scientists greater confidence of a strong or very strong El Niño later this year — particularly from November through January. Among them are temperatures increasing deep beneath the ocean’s surface, as warmer water from the western Pacific Ocean moves east.
Those deeper, warmer waters “are the fuel, if you will, for the development and strengthening of the upcoming El Niño event,” which is one reason why scientists are expecting “potentially a strong-to-very-strong” event, Jon Gottschalck, the Climate Prediction Center’s operational prediction branch chief, said in an interview.
California
A super-strength El Niño appears to be taking shape in the Pacific Ocean, heightening concerns that Southern California could be in for an extreme rainy season.
For Southern California, that could mean rain — and lots of it.
Two previous “very strong” El Niños — in 1982-83 and 1997-98 — deluged downtown Los Angeles with over 30 inches of rain, more than double the area’s average annual rainfall.
During the winter of 1982-83, damage was particularly severe along the coast as high tides surged amid powerful storms. About $100 million in damage was reported. In early 1998, storms brought widespread flooding and mudslides, causing 17 deaths and more than half a billion dollars in damage in California.
Another “very strong” El Niño that was recently upgraded by scientists — 1991-92 — brought 20.86 inches of rain, or about 150% of its average annual total, to downtown L.A.
The most recent El Niño of 2023-24, recently recategorized as being of “moderate” strength, also coincided with a pretty wet year for Southern California, with downtown L.A. receiving 155% of its typical annual rainfall. That February, there was record precipitation and a memorable five straight days of rain that triggered hundreds of mudslides in L.A. alone. Dozens of homes and buildings were damaged by debris flow, including 15 homes that were red-tagged.
Powerful El Niños don’t always mean heavy rain, but they can wreak havoc in other ways. The “very strong” El Niño of 2015-16 actually brought downtown L.A. only about half its annual rainfall — with just 6.88 inches falling — and failed to snap California out of a punishing five-year drought. Still, that year saw “record coastal erosion along many California beaches,” according to the state Coastal Commission.
“Even if we end up with a much drier winter, for instance, those with marine interests and along the coast can experience … damaging waves, as well as rip currents,” Cohen said.
Climate & Environment
Nowhere else on the planet has such a large swath of ocean been studied as thoroughly and for so long, and much of our modern approach to oceanography can be traced back to this hidden gem.
El Niño is one of the most powerful climate patterns on Earth, capable of reshaping global weather and affecting rainfall and drought, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It typically hits every two to seven years and lasts about nine to 12 months.
“Having a stronger, very strong El Niño certainly tips the scale toward a wetter-than-normal year, but it doesn’t guarantee it,” said meteorologist Jan Null, an adjunct professor at San José State University. It means there probably will be more rain, but “it doesn’t necessarily mean more flooding.”
Warming ocean temperatures — such as those seen during El Niño — also can have an array of effects on sea life.
That includes the potential for more sharks.
“In the near future, we may expect to see an increase in tropical or warm subtropical species, which may include increased shark sightings off of Southern California coast,” said Nate Jaros, the Aquarium of the Pacific’s vice president of animal care for fish and invertebrates. “In very rare cases, even whale sharks have visited off Catalina, including in the 2015-2016 El Niño events.”
California
With an uptick in great white shark activity at SoCal beaches, a team from the Cal State Long Beach Shark Lab tags the giant fish with a goal of gleaning insights that can improve ocean safety.
Warmer ocean temperatures can also increase the presence of sea jellies and other gelatinous creatures, Jaros said.
A jellyfish-like creature called Velella velella, also known as by-the-wind sailors, can wash up on West Coast shores and are usually harmless to people. However, “in past El Niño events, we’ve seen similar-looking Portuguese man o’ war, a very rare visitor to our waters, washing up on our beaches. These animals can have a very painful sting,” Jaros said.
Marine heat waves also have decimated California’s kelp, “with bull kelp habitats declining 90% in Northern California since 2014,” Jaros said.
“The effects of this decline trickle down to other species, including endangered white abalone. And warmer waters can exacerbate the effects of sea star wasting disease, especially on the sunflower sea star, a population that’s nearly been wiped out of California,” he said.
Climate & Environment
The marine heat wave of 2026 is simmering the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, and experts are warning that it could lead to a warm, humid and stormy summer.
Marine heat waves can be fatal for seabirds, which may starve if their food disappears, said Brett Long, the aquarium’s vice president of animal care for birds and marine mammals.
“Marine heat wave events often lead to more sea lion strandings,” he said. “This is because warmer ocean temperatures affect the kind of food available to them, or the production of algal toxins, which can result in severe illness and even death.”
There are currently two marine heat waves unrelated to El Niño near California — one just off the state’s southern coast that started in December, and another farther west off the coast of Northern California and Oregon that started in May, according to a map displayed by Andrew Leising, a research oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center.
El Niño also tends to cause marine heat waves, Leising said.
“One of the most important things, though, for the animals in the ecosystem is not necessarily just how hot it is — that is important in some cases — but just how long they’re exposed to the heat,” Leising said. “We have a situation, particularly in Southern California, where we’ve already had this marine heat wave, and we’re just gonna kind of roll on into a heat wave that’s been brought about by El Niño as we go into the fall and into next winter.”
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Rong-Gong Lin II is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times based in San Francisco who specializes in covering statewide earthquake safety issues and other natural disasters, public health and extreme weather. The Bay Area native is a graduate of UC Berkeley and started at The Times in 2004.
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