{"id":243236,"date":"2026-04-10T06:59:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/243236\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:59:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:59:13","slug":"noaa-releases-latest-outlook-for-el-nino-impacts-for-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/243236\/","title":{"rendered":"NOAA releases latest outlook for El Ni\u00f1o, impacts for Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center released its latest outlook Thursday,<\/a> showing a growing chance the climate pattern will return later this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Right now, conditions in the Pacific are neutral after months of La\u00a0Ni\u00f1a, but that may not last long.<\/p>\n

“In May-July 2026, El\u00a0Ni\u00f1o is likely to emerge (61% chance) and persist through at least the end of 2026,” NOAA said in its latest diagnostic discussion.<\/p>\n

Forecasters say that shift is being driven by warming water below the surface of the Pacific\u2014a key signal that often precedes El\u00a0Ni\u00f1o development. At the same time, the range of outcomes is still wide.<\/p>\n

For Texas, El\u00a0Ni\u00f1o’s influence tends to show up most clearly during the winter months. But Cameron Batiste, a lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in Houston\/Galveston, told Chron those impacts aren’t guaranteed and they don’t always show up right away.<\/p>\n

“So El\u00a0Ni\u00f1o just means that these cooler than normal and wetter than normal conditions are more likely, but it’s not exactly a guarantee,” he said.
Historically, stronger El Ni\u00f1o patterns brought wetter conditions across much of the state, including Southeast Texas, while also influencing storm tracks across the southern U.S.<\/p>\n

But summer is less predictable. Even in El\u00a0Ni\u00f1o years, Texas heat doesn’t follow a clean pattern, and forecasters caution against assuming the climate pattern will determine how hot the season will be.<\/p>\n

“It doesn’t always mean that we’ll see those associated impacts from El\u00a0Ni\u00f1o, but it does increase the probability of those impacts,” Batiste said, pointing to 2023, when El Ni\u00f1o conditions were present but Texas still experienced one of its hottest summers on record.<\/p>\n

Timing will also be key.\u00a0NOAA’s outlook shows El Ni\u00f1o is most likely to develop between late spring and mid-summer, which could influence the Atlantic hurricane season depending on how quickly it strengthens.<\/p>\n

Batiste said even if El\u00a0Ni\u00f1o helps suppress overall storm activity, that doesn’t eliminate risk for Texas.<\/p>\n

“It only takes one storm to cause significant impacts for a particular area,” he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center released its latest outlook Thursday, showing a growing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[30075,1836,1704,30074,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-243236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-alertable-weather-chr","9":"tag-chronnews","10":"tag-chronstaff","11":"tag-chronweather","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-headlines","14":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}