El Niño and La Niña: what the Pacific is doing right now
El Niño conditions are present
ONI +2.16 °C · Jul–Sep 2026 · Very strong · warming
The index has stayed past NOAA's ±0.5 °C threshold for 4 consecutive overlapping seasons, peaking at +2.16 °C. NOAA requires five before calling it a full El Niño episode, so this is not one yet — El Niño conditions, not an El Niño event.
This is context, not a forecast. El Niño and La Niña shift the odds of a wet or dry season across large regions over months. Neither one causes any individual flood, drought, wildfire or storm, and a region can have a severe flood in a season the Pacific was tilting towards drought. For what is actually happening right now, use the live alerts and your own national weather service.
What this phase tends to shift, by region
Tendencies over a season, drawn from NOAA and WMO guidance. Every line is a change in likelihood, never a prediction for a place on a date.
| Region | Typical tendency |
|---|---|
| Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines | Drier than normal, with a higher risk of drought, water shortages and peatland fires that produce regional haze. |
| Australia | Reduced winter and spring rainfall in the east, raising drought and bushfire risk. |
| India and South Asia | A weaker monsoon is more likely, though the link is a tendency and several strong El Niño years still delivered normal rain. |
| Pakistan | Monsoon rainfall tends to be suppressed, but heat extremes are more likely — the two risks move in opposite directions in the same season. |
| Peru, Ecuador and western South America | Much wetter, with flooding and landslides along the coast; this is where the name El Niño comes from. |
| Southern Brazil, Uruguay, northern Argentina | Wetter than normal, with a higher flood risk. |
| Southern United States | Wetter and stormier from California to the Gulf coast; the northern tier tends to be milder and drier. |
| Horn of Africa | Wetter short rains, which can end a drought and cause flooding in the same season. |
| Southern Africa | Drier, with elevated drought risk for the summer rainfall region. |
| Atlantic hurricane basin | Stronger upper-level winds tend to suppress hurricane activity. |
| Pacific typhoon basin | Storm formation shifts east, which tends to mean stronger, longer-lived typhoons and a different set of coasts at risk. |
| Global temperature | Heat stored in the Pacific is released to the atmosphere, so El Niño years usually run warmer worldwide. |
The last 13 seasons
Each row is a three-month average that overlaps the ones either side of it, which is why the index moves in small steps rather than jumping month to month.
| Season | Sea surface (°C) | Anomaly (°C) | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul–Sep 2026 | 29.12 | +2.16 | El Niño |
| Jun–Aug 2026 | 29.09 | +1.80 | El Niño |
| May–Jul 2026 | 29.02 | +1.39 | El Niño |
| Apr–Jun 2026 | 28.74 | +0.95 | El Niño |
| Mar–May 2026 | 28.09 | +0.46 | Neutral |
| Feb–Apr 2026 | 27.34 | +0.11 | Neutral |
| Jan–Mar 2026 | 26.57 | -0.21 | Neutral |
| Dec 2025–Feb 2026 | 26.15 | -0.39 | Neutral |
| Nov 2025–Jan 2026 | 25.96 | -0.60 | La Niña |
| Oct–Dec 2025 | 26.04 | -0.61 | La Niña |
| Sep–Nov 2025 | 26.14 | -0.57 | La Niña |
| Aug–Oct 2025 | 26.33 | -0.43 | Neutral |
| Jul–Sep 2025 | 26.70 | -0.26 | Neutral |
El Niño 2026-27: what it means for your state
NOAA's official winter outlook and each state's El Niño history: California · Texas · Arizona · Florida · Utah · all states.
In California a strong El Niño winter usually means atmospheric river storms; the US winter storm history lists the biggest past storms.
How to prepare for an El Niño winter
El Niño shifts the odds for a season, not the forecast for your town, so the preparation is the usual winter preparation. The official checklists:
- Follow your local forecast and warnings: National Weather Service, and its winter safety pages. Days ahead: winter storm outlook.
- Sign up for your community's emergency alerts, and get the home and car ready for snow, ice and power outages: Ready.gov winter weather.
- Where the risk is heavy rain rather than snow: Ready.gov floods.
How the classification works
- The Oceanic Niño Index (ONI)
- A running three-month average of the sea-surface temperature anomaly in the Niño 3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific, in degrees Celsius against a 30-year baseline. It is the index NOAA itself uses to define these events.
- Conditions versus an episode
- A single season at or beyond ±0.5 °C means conditions are present. An episode needs five consecutive overlapping seasons past that threshold. Most coverage collapses the two; this page keeps them apart, because the difference is months of ocean.
- Strength bands
- Read off the peak of the run: weak 0.5–0.9, moderate 1.0–1.4, strong 1.5–1.9, very strong 2.0 and above. The same bands apply to La Niña on the cold side.
Why this sits on a disaster site
Everything else here is an event: it happened at a place, at a time, and an agency published it. ENSO is not an event. It is the state of an ocean that shifts what the next few seasons are likely to bring — monsoon strength, drought risk, hurricane and typhoon activity — across several continents at once. Knowing which phase the Pacific is in tells you which way the odds are leaning before anything appears on the map.
Source: NOAA Climate Prediction Center, Oceanic Niño Index. Published monthly; this page refreshes within six hours of a change. We reproduce NOAA's figures and thresholds and add no index of our own.
See also: Live alerts · Hazard types · Country reports · Glossary · Data sources