How do you feel about cold weather?
I moved to the West Coast to get away from the hot summers of Washington DC in Pennsylvania. The summers are now approaching. What was the East Coast weather?
So any cold weather is encouraging. This depresses me.
El Niño is coming faster than expected in the Pacific Ocean.
According to NOAA’s latest forecast, there is now about a 1-in-3 chance this El Niño could become a rare “Super” El Niño by late 2026. That would place it among the strongest events recorded in modern history.
El Niño happens when a vast region of the tropical Pacific Ocean becomes unusually warm. But this isn’t just an ocean event. The warming disrupts global wind patterns and shifts weather systems across the planet.
And stronger El Niños can dramatically amplify those effects.
Scientists are especially concerned because an enormous pool of unusually warm water has rapidly built up beneath the Pacific surface in recent weeks. As that heat rises upward, it can strengthen El Niño even further through summer and fall.
Water temperatures only need to rise about 0.9°F (0.5°C) above average for El Niño conditions to officially develop. But “Super” El Niño events occur when temperatures exceed 3.6°F (2°C) above normal across a large section of the equatorial Pacific.
Only a handful of Super El Niños have occurred in modern records, including the major events of 1982–83, 1997–98, and 2015–16.
Those years brought severe droughts, destructive flooding, coral bleaching, deadly heat waves, crop disruptions, and major changes to hurricane activity worldwide.
Forecasters say this developing El Niño could suppress Atlantic hurricanes while increasing storm activity in the Pacific. It may also fuel drought across parts of Asia, intensify wildfire conditions in some regions, and raise the odds that 2026 or 2027 becomes the hottest year ever measured globally.
Scientists caution that uncertainty still remains over exactly how strong the event will become.
But confidence is growing rapidly that El Niño is no longer just forming — it may be accelerating toward something far more powerful.
“El Niño is coming faster than expected and chances are rising that it will be historically strong.”
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