NOAA: This El Niño Has About a 60% Chance of Becoming the Strongest Since 1950
A Climate Prediction Center outlook published Thursday said the very strong El Niño strengthened in October and will likely continue to do so through this year. A Scripps oceanographer told SFGATE, 'This is really big.'
By the Bay Area Brief staff · Edited by Seamus McKenna · · 3 min read
Grey, overcast skies over San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge. Photo: Weston Woodbury / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 (cropped, resized and color-graded). Archive photo of the area; not a photo of the events in this story.
This year's very strong El Niño is still gathering momentum in the Pacific, according to a monthly outlook the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center published Thursday, SFGATE reported.
The memo said El Niño strengthened in October and will likely continue to do so through this year. It gives about a 60% chance that by early 2027 the event will surpass the strength of all El Niños since 1950. "This is not your normal El Niño," Daniel Rudnick, a physical oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, told SFGATE. "This is really big." A September Climate Prediction Center report showed key temperatures in a designated area of the tropical Pacific reached 2.1 degrees Celsius above normal, in NOAA's "very strong" category. Whether the event is officially the strongest on record "is coming down to nuanced measurements at NOAA," SFGATE reported.
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New tow vehicles, trailers, inflatable boats and protective gear are going to local fire departments whose teams can deploy anywhere in the state when floods hit.
Report author Fraser Shilling says Highway 37 is the most obvious risk. At 2 to 3 feet of extra water, parts of SFO, Oakland's airport and West Oakland could flood at least temporarily.
Caltrans is told to prioritize landslide prevention. The state says it spent about $312 million on emergency projects on the Big Sur stretch of Highway 1 from 2020 through 2026.
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