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El Niño is still on its way, but once it gets here, we should plan on it sticking around for a while. That’s the latest conclusion from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (CPC) this week in a nutshell.
The recent report says that El Niño conditions had still not developed but forecasters expect them to emerge soon. Specifically, they give an 82 percent chance that the shift from ENSO neutral conditions to El Niño conditions will occur anytime between this month and July. They are even more certain that once El Niño settles in, there’s a 96 percent chance it continues through the upcoming winter.
CPC forecasters also shared another important nugget when discussing how strong they expect the climate event to be. Much of the anticipation surrounding this upcoming El Niño revolves around hyperbolic nicknames like Godzilla El Niño and Super El Niño — phrases that illustrate we might expect extreme conditions associated with how El Niño impacts the climate of a given region. Bigger waves more often through the Pacific? Deeper snow and more storms on the U.S. West Coast? A drier and warmer season in Australia? (Read more about what El Niño means for surf and snow here.)
“Stronger El Niño events do not ensure strong impacts; they can only make certain impacts more likely,” forecasters explained.
Furthermore, forecasters say it is still too early for them to offer certainty that it will all live up to the “Super El Niño” moniker.
“While confidence in the occurrence of El Niño has increased since last month, there is still substantial uncertainty in the peak strength of El Niño, with no strength categorization exceeding a 37 percent chance. The strongest El Niño events in the historical record are characterized by significant ocean-atmosphere coupling through the summer, and it remains to be seen whether this occurs in 2026,” they said.
