As the 2026-27 El Niño flirts with record territory, scientists are increasingly confident it will have an outsize influence on California precipitation. That’s because there is a significant similarity between this event and two prior very strong El Niños that drenched California, and a difference from two that didn’t. The key is the exact location of warm water: El Niños in the far east — with the most unusually warm water near South America — correlate more strongly with California precipitation than a central-Pacific based El Niño, according to John O’Brien, a climate scientist and a program officer for science at the Heising-Simons Foundation. … Despite El Niño’s outsize influence, scientists note there’s a chance California ends up relatively dry. Nothing is guaranteed.

Other El Niño news:

• The Sacramento Bee (Calif.): El Niño could usher Central Valley floods. One strategy: let it flood like it used to​
• USGS: Blog: Regional Super El Niño impacts: Southwest U.S.