Overview
- NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center expects a transition from La Niña to ENSO-neutral conditions through most of the Northern Hemisphere summer, with about a 60% chance of El Niño developing later in 2026.
- NOAA has adopted a new relative index for classifying El Niño and La Niña that compares Pacific temperatures to the broader tropics, a change expected to yield more La Niñas and fewer El Niños in the historical tally.
- Subsurface warming in the equatorial Pacific and multi-model guidance support the tilt toward El Niño later this year, though projections beyond three to six months carry greater uncertainty.
- In New England, an El Niño typically nudges the jet stream north, favoring warmer-than-normal and somewhat drier summers and falls compared with average.
- For Texas and the Gulf, neutral conditions through hurricane season remove consistent Pacific suppression; Gulf and Caribbean waters are running warm, most Texas landfalls since 1950 occurred in neutral years, and none have happened during El Niño in the past 75 years, though very warm Atlantic waters can counter typical El Niño suppression as seen in 2023.