{"id":458709,"date":"2026-09-09T23:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T23:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/458709\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T23:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T23:20:10","slug":"hurricane-marie-damaged-la-oc-beaches-super-el-nino-could-be-worse-experts-say-redlands-daily-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/458709\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Marie damaged LA, OC beaches. Super El Ni\u00f1o could be worse, experts say \u2013 Redlands Daily Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The coastal flooding witnessed in Southern California this month \u2014 with high waves caused by Hurricane Marie<\/a> lashing Dana Point, Long Beach<\/a>, Laguna Beach and Malibu and damaging property there \u2014 could well continue this winter as the El Ni\u00f1o weather phenomenon may increase the likelihood of hurricane impacts on the region, adding swells on top of already-rising sea levels, weather experts say.<\/p>\n

Nine beachfront homes in Dana Point<\/a> have been red-tagged as uninhabitable as of Wednesday, Sept. 9. Seven others have been yellow-tagged for restricted access there, as have four in Laguna Beach.<\/p>\n

\"WavesWaves crash into a home that was red tagged after waves damaged several homes near Beach Road in Dana Point over the weekend, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026.
\n(Photo by Steven Georges, Contributing Photographer)<\/p>\n

A sinkhole devoured the driveway at actor Nicolas Cage\u2019s Malibu home<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy guess is the coastal flooding will be far worse once winter storms really begin to push that water into coastal Southern California,\u201d Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, said in a forecast outlook published on YouTube.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the sea level off the coast of Southern California is now 6 to 10 inches above average,\u201d Swain said. \u201cThat might not sound like a lot, but, you know, that 10 inches, then you add on top of it, high tide, you then add on top of it, big waves (such as from a hurricane).<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why I\u2019m so concerned about what November, December, and January look like,\u201d Swain continued. \u201cThis is going to be the peak overlap of maximum sea level increase from El Ni\u00f1o\u201d and King tides, a non-scientific name for extreme high tides caused by the gravitational pulls of the sun and moon.<\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1o is what forms from unusually warm sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean along the equator, said Kyle Wheeler, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in San Diego. It develops over several months to a year and affects global weather, making winters more likely to see higher rain totals and increased sea levels. An El Ni\u00f1o can change the flow of warm water and push the Pacific jet stream south.<\/p>\n

One happens every couple of years, Wheeler said.<\/p>\n

Some people are calling the impending system a \u201cSuper El Ni\u00f1o.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe term (at the weather service) is \u2018very large El Ni\u00f1o,\u2019 \u201d Wheeler said.<\/p>\n

The weather service, Wheeler said, is being cautious about predicting an increase in coastal flooding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea that any of this (current damage) is tied to El Ni\u00f1o, you can loosely say some of this is,\u201d Wheeler said. \u201cThe increase in hurricane activity in the eastern Pacific Ocean is a known correlation to El Ni\u00f1o events. The presence of an El Ni\u00f1o means a more active hurricane season in the eastern Pacific on average, so there is a slightly increased likelihood of seeing impacts in Southern California.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t guarantee anything,\u201d Wheeler added.<\/p>\n

What an El Ni\u00f1o does do, he said, is \u201ctilt the odds that we have a rainier winter in Southern California.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swain said he worries about Kelvin waves, which are large waves in the ocean that are trapped and guided along a physical boundary. They are affected by the Earth\u2019s rotation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can stack on top of each other, so it might be that the temporary sea-level rise from one of these Kelvin waves doesn\u2019t fully decline for the next peak rise, and then we get an even higher peak that time, and then the same thing happens with the third one,\u201d Swain said.<\/p>\n

He also mentioned the threat from melting glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica that are raising the sea level.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is connected,\u201d Swain said.<\/p>\n

\"GenovevaGenoveva Gonzales and her daughter Layla, 17, take a front row seat to watch the pounding surf at the Seal Beach Pier on Sunday, September 6, 2026. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register\/SCNG)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The coastal flooding witnessed in Southern California this month \u2014 with high waves caused by Hurricane Marie lashing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7,48,52,51,47,137,50,49,100,611,1492,612,5518,136,19],"class_list":["post-458709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-california","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-public-safety","tag-riverside-county","tag-san-bernardino-county","tag-top-stories","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}