… This year, as California faces what experts are calling “Super El Niño” conditions, residents in the Delta are preparing for the prospect of devastating flooding. … But if predictions hold, keeping the water out won’t be an easy task. The volume of water pushing against the Delta’s roughly 1,100 miles of levees — many built by hand more than a hundred years ago — will be much higher. With warmer ocean temperatures, tide levels and storm surges will rise, and wet, warm storm systems will become stronger and more frequent. In a possible scenario this year, a supercharged King Tide may coincide with an atmospheric river, sending powerful floodwaters downhill from the Sierra Nevada to meet a water level in the Delta up to six feet higher than normal. 

Other El Niño news:

• KQED (San Francisco): California’s El Niño winter could be ‘profoundly unsubtle,’ scientists warn
• SFGate: ‘We’re weather farmers’: Will Tahoe see a big winter in El Niño?
• San Francisco Chronicle: Sue the ocean for El Niño damages? Personhood claims test the limits of liability