Met Office: El Niño Strongest in a Century

What NOAA says about the US winter

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, in its August 13 ENSO discussion, put the odds of a "very strong" event during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter of 2026-27 at greater than 90%. For October through December, it said there is a 69% chance of a historic event exceeding the strength of any El Niño back to 1950.

July index values were +1.4C in Niño-3.4 and +2.9C in Niño-1+2, with subsurface temperature anomalies reaching +10C at depth, the center said. Its own caveat is blunt: with an event this size "the chances of experiencing impacts consistent with El Niño are larger, but they are not guaranteed."

The center's seasonal outlook, released August 20 and reported by The Hill, leans warmer than normal for nearly every state from September through November, with the Pacific Northwest most likely to run hot. Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia have roughly equal odds of a warm, cool or average fall. On rainfall, the Southwest and Southeast lean wet; the Northeast and Pacific Northwest lean dry.

The classic winter pattern, The Hill noted, is warmer and drier across the north and the Ohio Valley and wetter across the southern half of the country, with the dividing line shifting year to year with the jet stream. El Niño also tends to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity and worsen high-tide flooding on the West Coast.

In July, the Guardian reported that Goldman Sachs analysts estimated an El Niño of this strength could drive a 15.8% surge in global food commodity prices, with the full effect taking until the second half of 2028 to be realized because of crop planting and harvest cycles. The European Central Bank has previously estimated a strong El Niño could raise global food commodity prices by up to 9%, with soya beans, corn and rice hit hardest. Climate-risk firm Risilience told the paper an extreme scenario could cut global agricultural production by 14.3%, or $342 billion.

Shipping is already feeling it: the Panama Canal is cutting daily transits as El Niño-driven drought worsens, as The Frank reported Friday.

The hedge

No two El Niño events are the same, the BBC noted, and the pattern raises the chance of certain weather without guaranteeing it. On the question of a cold late winter, the BBC said the link is not strong and the record is mixed — the 2009-10 "Big Freeze" coincided with an El Niño, but the 2006-07 winter was unseasonably warm.