It's Official - El Niño Has Arrived - Wet Weather Ahead.
May 10, 2026. Cloudcroft, New Mexico. It's now official: El Niño has developed in the eastern Pacific Ocean. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center announced this morning. El Niño starts with westerly winds across the equatorial Pacific. Those winds blow warm surface waters eastward, creating a warm pool in the eastern tropical Pacific. That heats the air above, causing it to rise and triggering a chain reaction that reshuffles key weather patterns in the global atmosphere. This could be one of the strongest, if not the strongest, El Niño since recordkeeping began in 1950. Some have speculated that it may even be stronger than the historic El Niño of 1877 that killed over 50 million people. The 1877–1878 El Niño event was the strongest El Niño on record. It contributed to widespread drought and famine in multiple countries, causing the death of more than 50 million people. Disasters associated with it include the Great Famine of 1876–1878 in India, the Grande Seca in Brazil, and ...