El Niño is here and rapidly strengthening. Here’s what it means for your weather | CNN

El Niño has officially begun, and it is forecast to intensify into a very strong or “Super” El Niño with major shifts in global weather patterns and an even hotter climate, according to a new report released Thursday morning from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. El Niño is a periodic weather pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean that alters winds and features unusually hot waters in the central and eastern Pacific. These changes in winds and ocean temperatures have knock-on effects on weather patterns worldwide. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center is giving this El Niño a 63% chance of becoming a “very strong” event (colloquially known as a Super El Niño) and one of the “largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950.” In a sign of the center’s certainty in the forecast, it’s giving 100% odds of El Niño continuing through the fall and extremely high odds continuing into the winter. ☔️ ☀️ Check out the CNN Weather app for iPhone For it to be considered a Super El Niño, tropical Pacific water temperatures must be more than 2 degrees above average. Some reliable computer models suggest that bar will be greatly exce