El Niño has officially arrived, the National Weather Service declared Thursday, and the latest edition is shaping up to be particularly potent.
The pattern developed over the past month and is expected to strengthen throughout the year, with the weather service’s Climate Prediction Center assessing a 63% chance of a “very strong” El Niño November through January that would rank among the most powerful on record going back to 1950.
Stronger El Niños, which are characterized by warmer ocean waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, “can more significantly tilt the odds in favor of expected outcomes,” the Climate Prediction Center said.
For Southern California, that could mean rain — and lots of it.
A typical El Niño is linked with higher-than-average precipitation, according to the National Weather Service. Of the three “very strong” El Niños over the last 75 years, two of them, 1982-83 and 1997-98, brought huge and destructive amounts of precipitation to the Golden State.
And a “strong” El Niño in 2023-24 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.
But the connection between El Niño and a soaked Southern California is not a certainty.
The 2015-16 El Niño, while strong in the equatorial Pacific and responsible for consequential weather elsewhere in the world, didn’t bring the anticipated rainfall effects to Southern California, failing to snap the state out of a punishing five-year drought.
“Even very strong El Niño events do not lead to the expected impact everywhere,” the Climate Prediction Center said.
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.
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