Sigh... The misleading click-bait of a national news source: ABC News
ABC News main web site has an article dated March 16, 2026, titled "El Nino[sic] is likely to return this year, but its strength and impacts remain uncertain"
but the still image teasing for the article (among all the articles at the main web site) is a picture of flooding in Surfside Beach, TX (near Galveston) from June 19, 2024. The linked article is here.
A caption identifying that image is overlaid immediately by a caption that says "Conveyor Belt of Storms Fueled by El Nino[sic] in California".
When you click on that image, you get an undated news clip ("Breaking News: Weather Emergency") of floods in Los Angeles. Nowhere in the 2:27 video do they indicate the date of the news clip, potentially leading a casual viewer to think it is happening now. Probably the video is from January 2016.
FYI, as for the Surfside Beach photo, El Niño ended a month before, in May 2024. Moreover, El Niño has minimal impact on summer rain in Texas. (Winter is a different story.)
The current NWS estimate is 1 in 3 chance that El Niño would be strong in October-December 2026. Will that bring a conveyer of storms to California? Well, the NWS records of historical ENSO events show only a minimal increase of precipitation in those months in California (or snow)
However, if El Niño is still going January to April (which is beyond the current prediction window), then California will likely get the storms.
ABC News main web site has an article dated March 16, 2026, titled "El Nino[sic] is likely to return this year, but its strength and impacts remain uncertain"
but the still image teasing for the article (among all the articles at the main web site) is a picture of flooding in Surfside Beach, TX (near Galveston) from June 19, 2024. The linked article is here.
A caption identifying that image is overlaid immediately by a caption that says "Conveyor Belt of Storms Fueled by El Nino[sic] in California".
When you click on that image, you get an undated news clip ("Breaking News: Weather Emergency") of floods in Los Angeles. Nowhere in the 2:27 video do they indicate the date of the news clip, potentially leading a casual viewer to think it is happening now. Probably the video is from January 2016.
FYI, as for the Surfside Beach photo, El Niño ended a month before, in May 2024. Moreover, El Niño has minimal impact on summer rain in Texas. (Winter is a different story.)
The current NWS estimate is 1 in 3 chance that El Niño would be strong in October-December 2026. Will that bring a conveyer of storms to California? Well, the NWS records of historical ENSO events show only a minimal increase of precipitation in those months in California (or snow)
However, if El Niño is still going January to April (which is beyond the current prediction window), then California will likely get the storms.