‘Expect Chaos’: Climate Expert Forecasts Extreme Weather as West Coast Prepares for El Niño

A car sits submerged in floodwaters in Pajaro, Calif., on March 14, 2023. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Climate experts are warning of possible extreme weather as an El Niño weather pattern arrives this summer along the west coast.

This year’s El Niño looks to be a “strong one,” according to climate expert Dr. Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Climate Research Center in Massachusetts.

“Expect Chaos,” Francis said on ClimateGenn, a podcast that focuses on climate issues, May 25. “Expect unusual events, expect extreme events. We’re going to see heat waves. We’re going to see floods. We’re going to see some strong hurricanes—rapidly intensifying hurricanes.”

Even though El Niño typically creates fewer hurricanes in the North Atlantic, that probably won’t happen this year because the Atlantic Ocean is undergoing an “ocean heat wave,” Francis added. The unusually warm waters are expected to fuel hurricanes in that region.

The National Weather Service predicts the climate pattern, marked by warm water in the Pacific Ocean, to return to California and the Pacific Northwest by summertime.

A strong El Niño combined with warmer-than-usual water in the North Pacific and Atlantic oceans, is making it harder to forecast the weather events, Francis said. The Arctic is also warming about four times faster than the globe.

“This combination of factors is really nothing that we’ve seen before, so it’s a real challenge to make any kind of prediction,” she said.

Average global temperatures tend to spike during El Niño years, which is concerning, according to Francis.

In California, the pattern usually affects the southern region more than the central or northern areas, according to Dalton Behringer, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Monterey, California.

“The actual conditions themselves that define El Niño [will arrive] mid-to-late summer,” Behringer told The Epoch Times.

The Golden State has experienced some weather extremes in the past year as record rainfall and snow lifted the state out of a dry spell during a two-year La Niña, a weather pattern that can cause drier-than-average years. El Niño years are usually wetter-than-average, but many conditions can counteract the pattern or enhance it, depending on what weather patterns develop locally, according to Behringer.

The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño Watch alert May 11, advising of the transition to the new weather pattern in the Northern Hemisphere. Warmer ocean waters expanded westward in April in the Pacific Ocean, prompting the alert.

Much of California has seen overcast skies for the past week, but that could change by the weekend.

At the beach in Monterey and Santa Cruz, the sun should make an appearance as warmer temperatures return, according to the local National Weather Service office.

“We’ll see clearer skies and temperatures in the 70s to low 80s in some places,” Behringer said.

A low-pressure system that has blanketed the area with dark clouds, should start moving inland as a high-pressure ridge arrives, he added.

Los Angeles County is also stuck in a “May gray, June gloom” pattern.

“It’s giving us all these clouds with some clearing in the afternoon,” National Weather Service Meteorologist Richard Thompson told The Epoch Times. “It’s very typical for this time of year.”

By Sunday, the skies could clear, he said.