El Niño will upend winter weather in the US. Here’s who will feel it the most – CNN

El Niño will upend winter weather in the US. Here’s who will feel it the most  CNN

The burgeoning Super El Niño will have major implications for winter weather in the United States. Winter is not only when this El Niño will peak in strength, but also when its influence on global weather is most pronounced. 🌊 Watch the full Ask a Scientist about El Niño interview only in the CNN Weather app. 👨🏻‍🔬 El Niño is a natural climate cycle marked by warmer than average water temperatures along the equator in the Pacific Ocean. The warmer water triggers corresponding shifts in the atmosphere that have a domino-like influence on weather patterns around the globe – usually in ways that are largely predictable well in advance. The stronger an El Niño is, the more likely these expected weather patterns will play out.

And this one could be going for gold. It’s strengthening rapidly, forecast to become a Super El Niño no later than October, and has a nearly 70% chance by year-end of becoming the strongest El Niño on record. This potentially record-breaking El Niño is “something that’s very unusual, if not a once in a lifetime type of (strength),” according to Nat Johnson, a meteorologist with the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It’s important to note that a historically strong El Niño does not mean that historically intense weather and