A developing El Niño could reach record strength and scramble weather worldwide this winter, the U.N. weather agency warned, as California braces under emergency orders.
On Oct. 21, the World Meteorological Organization described the growing Pacific pattern as a “behemoth” and a “wrecking ball,” USA TODAY reported. Officials said the event may become extremely strong, with central Pacific temperatures rising more than 6 degrees Fahrenheit above normal between November and January and peaking around December.
The natural warming of eastern and central Pacific waters tends to lift global temperatures and disrupt rainfall. The WMO said extreme weather already underway is expected to multiply and cascade as the pattern intensifies, with lasting effects on agriculture, infrastructure, and supply chains and the potential for trillions of dollars in damages.
U.N. officials framed the outlook in blunt terms. Tom Fletcher warned of profound humanitarian consequences across wide stretches of the developing world.
"It will tear through Latin America, Eastern and Southern Africa, Asia and the Pacific with extreme heat, droughts and flood"
That warning came from the same United Nations apparatus that has drawn sharp political fights on other fronts, including when Trump confronted CNN’s Collins at the United Nations during high-profile gatherings in New York.
Celeste Saulo, secretary of the WMO, said the developing El Niño could be unprecedented in strength and sits outside the agency’s usual historical range.
“This is literally off the monitoring charts that we have used for the past four decades”
Saulo said the event is forecast to peak later in 2026, “but its impacts will be felt long after that.”
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center has forecast, with high confidence, that El Niño will reach record-breaking strength and crest this winter. Ken Graham, director of NOAA’s National Weather Service, earlier in October urged the country to prepare. A very strong event tilts the odds toward stormier weather across the South, he said, while carrying a double-edged risk for drought regions.
“While higher chances of rain and snow may bring relief to drought-afflicted areas, too much precipitation on dry soil can fuel destructive flash floods and mudslides”
Emily Becker, deputy director of the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies at the University of Miami, said confidence in the outlook is now very high and the strong pattern should last through the next several months. She also stressed a basic weather reality: short-term surprises still matter, and local forecasts must be watched even during a major El Niño.
International pressure campaigns at the U.N. have lately ranged far beyond weather, from protest arrests outside the headquarters to a U.N. committee push on slavery reparations framed as a legal duty under older conventions.
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently declared a state of emergency to prepare for the event’s impacts. Shoreline flooding has already appeared along the Southern California coast, raising concerns for the months ahead.
Fraser Shilling, director of the UC Davis Road Ecology Center at the Institute of Transportation Studies, recently published a California-focused report on winter risk. He said Highway 37 and other coastal roadways are extremely vulnerable to floods and failure during the coming El Niño and urged residents to stay informed so they can make practical decisions.
That infrastructure warning lands on taxpayers who have watched coastal and inland systems strain under prior storms. An emergency declaration does not by itself harden roads, clear channels, or fix drainage that fails when heavy rain hits dry ground.
Celebrity-led demonstrations and partisan street actions near U.N. facilities have also filled recent headlines, including when Susan Sarandon was among more than 100 arrested outside the United Nations during anti-Netanyahu protests.
The WMO outlook sketches a familiar El Niño map with sharp regional splits. Southern parts of western South America and portions of North America face one set of rainfall risks. Central America, the southern Caribbean, and the Amazon face another. East Africa is likely to see wetter-than-normal conditions during the October, December rainy season, with heavy rain and flooding concerns. Southern Africa faces increased odds of drier conditions from the typical November start of its rainy season. Southeast Asia may see warmer conditions, rainfall deficits, pressure on crops and water supplies, and higher wildfire and smoke-haze risk.
Those splits matter for food prices, shipping, and energy demand far beyond the Pacific. When rains fail in one breadbasket and flood another, households feel it at the store even if the ocean temperature charts never make the local news.
Separate U.N.-adjacent political theater has kept the diplomatic campus in the spotlight as well, including coverage of a socialist congressional nominee arrested near the United Nations during related demonstrations.
Michael Mann, a climate scientist and University of Pennsylvania professor, told USA TODAY the episode will certainly be a historic El Niño and the biggest event on record. Reliable instrument records, he noted, go back less than a century. A study he led, released earlier this year, found El Niño contributed substantially to the record 2024 global temperatures.
Mann also said El Niño warming adds to human-caused warming in a way that produces new records during major events, and that such spikes offer a glimpse of “what our future will look like if we continue to warm the planet.” In the same set of comments, he stated the science is very unclear on whether human-caused warming is increasing the amplitude of El Niño events themselves.
That last point is the one policymakers often skip. A strong natural Pacific cycle can deliver harsh seasons whether or not activists treat every storm as a verdict on energy policy. Preparation, water storage, grid reliability, and road design decide how many people get hurt when the rains finally arrive.
Foreign-policy arguments tied to the U.N. stage have stayed loud on other files too, including when Netanyahu rejected claims that Israel stole Palestinian land in the long-running diplomatic fight over the conflict’s history.
Forecasters point to the November, January window for the sharpest Pacific temperature anomalies and to a December-centered peak. Impacts are expected to linger after the ocean pattern crests. For the United States, the practical watch list is straightforward: flash-flood and mudslide risk where drought soils meet heavy rain, stormier odds across the South, and coastal flood pressure in California where shoreline roads already show strain.
None of that requires panic theater. It requires clear forecasts, honest maintenance budgets, and local officials who treat drainage and power reliability as seriously as press conferences. El Niño is a recurring ocean pattern with a long observational history. Calling it a wrecking ball does not replace the work of hardening the systems people actually use.
Strong seasons expose weak preparation. Taxpayers should demand readiness measured in cleared culverts, sound roadbeds, and working water systems, not another round of global rhetoric from institutions that lecture first and deliver later.
