ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 La Ni\u00f1a is fading; El Ni\u00f1o is about to burst on the scene. This has huge implications for weather across the globe including right here in Central Florida.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s looked likely El Ni\u00f1o would arrive by the summer of 2026, but the strength of it has been the question.<\/p>\n
The brand new run of the European Ensembles have most of its members above 2 degrees Celsius above normal. <\/p>\n
El Ni\u00f1o forecast<\/p>\n
That is significant because the strongest ones on record would be rivaled.<\/p>\n
Top 3 El Ni\u00f1o<\/p>\n
To be considered El Ni\u00f1o, sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific have to be .5 degrees Celsius above normal.<\/p>\n
This change in temperature significantly changes the global weather patter.<\/p>\n
There is something known as the spring prediction barrier, where there is greater-than-normal error when it comes to the predictions. <\/p>\n
With that said, observations above and below the surface of the Pacific suggest that a strong El Ni\u00f1o is possible, maybe even likely.<\/p>\n
What does this mean for Florida?<\/p>\n
In the summer, El Ni\u00f1o typically reduces the number of named tropical storms.<\/p>\n
I use the work NORMALLY strong here, because 2023 remains a prevalent outlier. However, when we see El Nino conditions observed in the Pacific, NORMALLY the Atlantic hurricane season is far more tame with a lot more systems recurving away from land due to weakened Bermuda high pressure. 2023 broke those rules and then some. (Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n
El Ni\u00f1o increases stability and wind shear in the Atlantic. Both of those are detrimental to tropical development. It\u2019s important to note significant impacts are still possible from the tropics in an El Ni\u00f1o year even though there are forces acting to suppress the season. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 is the perfect example of this. The season was well below normal as a whole, but Category 5 Andrew made landfall in South Florida.<\/p>\n
El Ni\u00f1o is expected to continue through fall in winter. Typically in Florida, winters are wetter and stormier in an El Ni\u00f1o pattern.<\/p>\n
The opposite influence occurs during El Nino conditions with a much more southern biased jet stream driving moisture and strong storms typically into our area, and across the south (Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n
The extra wind shear that is detrimental to tropical systems helps to fuel thunderstorms, increasing the severe weather threat in the cool months.<\/p>\n
This would also help to prevent a major drought developing in Florida\u2019s dry season.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 La Ni\u00f1a is fading; El Ni\u00f1o is about to burst on the scene. This has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,508,2457,1846,139,221],"class_list":{"0":"post-221018","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news","11":"tag-forecast","12":"tag-history","13":"tag-hurricane","14":"tag-orlando","15":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}