El Nino is here and scientists fear it'll be big, bad and costly with heat, floods, droughts, fires [View all]

https://apnews.com/article/el-nino-climate-change-flood-drought-damage-7eafacd2bcf04ade9d7f555dfd488178

El Nino is here and scientists fear it’ll be big, bad and costly with heat, floods, droughts, fires
By SETH BORENSTEIN
Updated 8:01 AM CDT, June 11, 2026

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The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officially confirmed the existence of the El Nino, which is a warming of the Pacific near the equator that affects weather patterns across the globe. NOAA’s announcement said there’s a 63% chance that the El Nino will get so intense this late fall and early winter that it “would rank among the largest El Nino events in the historical record going back to 1950.”

In the U.S., El Ninos can cause more intense storms with heavier rainfall in the South, but they also tend to generally benefit the U.S. agriculture industry, said Jon Gottschalck, operational branch chief at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

The northern Rockies and Southwest — where there’s an “off the charts” snow drought — could get some strong summer rains, Gottschalck said. The biggest effect in the U.S. is often in the winter, when the south can get wetter and the Pacific Northwest warmer and drier.

But overall, temperatures raised by the weather pattern can dampen American economic growth, said Stanford climate economist Marshall Burke. Several climate scientists forecast that 2027 will be the hottest year on record because of lagging effects of this El Nino, which is expected to peak in the fall or winter.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatories-initiative.html