El Niño 2026–27: The Strongest on Record Is Forming, and Florida's Floods Are the Preview

On November 1, two feet of rain fell on Malabar, Florida, in 36 hours. Down the coast, Palm Beach Gardens took 17 inches in six hours. Cars floated, roads closed, towns declared emergencies, and two people died in Brevard County. The rainfall totals passed the threshold for a 1-in-1,000-year event — the kind of number that is supposed to describe something you never see. Florida saw it in the first week of its dry season.

The dry season is supposed to be the safe half of the year. What changed is 8,000 miles away in the equatorial Pacific, where the ocean is running about 2.5°C warmer than average. This is El Niño, the climate pattern NOAA calls "arguably the most influential climate driver on Earth," and this one is shaping up to be the biggest in the modern record.

The measurement that matters is NOAA's relative oceanic Niño index, or RONI — a three-month average of Pacific sea-surface temperatures with the background warming trend filtered out, so that today's warm ocean is judged against today's climate rather than 1950's. The latest reading, for August through October, is 1.97°C above average. The record is 2.40°C, set in the winter of 1982–83. At the same stage of its development, the famous 1997–98 El Niño stood at 2.07°C. This one is close behind, still strengthening, and its peak months — December through February — are still ahead.

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center puts the chance of a strong-to-very-strong event above 83%, and its latest monthly outlook says the chances "remain high for a historic event that would exceed the strength of previous El Niño events dating back to 1950." Florida's state climatologist, Emily Powell, expects it to become a historic event that exceeds every El Niño since 1950, with the peak arriving within the next month or so. Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather goes further, arguing from tree rings and ocean corals that it is likely the strongest in a thousand years.

The flooding so far is consistent with that forecast. It has been the wettest fall on record through November 4 in Albuquerque (5.20 inches), Flagstaff (13.15 inches) and West Palm Beach (34.68 inches). Two major flash floods hit the desert Southwest in two weeks, and another struck the mountains of northern Georgia and southeastern Tennessee. The National Weather Service in Miami expects a wetter and stormier than normal winter across South Florida, with a 60–70% chance of above-normal rainfall from January through March, and forecasters are watching an atmospheric river due over California and the Pacific Northwest on November 10–12. The pattern NOAA describes — a warm north, a wet south — is forecast to last at least through February.

There is a prediction market for exactly this question. On Polymarket, "Will the 2026–27 El Niño be the strongest on record?" — resolved yes if the peak RONI tops 2.40°C — trades at about 89.5% as of November 7. I put it lower, at 70%. I agree with the direction: the event is still strengthening into its peak season, and NOAA's own language points the same way. But 89.5% prices the record as nearly certain, and the RONI's design is exactly what makes that overconfident. Because the index strips out the warming trend, the raw ocean temperatures that look spectacular — 2.5°C above average — overstate the case against 1982–83, when the background ocean was cooler. The current three-month reading still needs to climb 0.43°C to break the record, and El Niño peaks are noisy things: a shift in the trade winds in December could shave the peak just enough. Seventy percent is my honest number — likely, not near-certain.

One correction to the coverage, including my own headline: "super El Niño" is not a scientific term. Powell is explicit about that. It is a media label for an event that crosses into very strong territory. The science underneath is precise enough without it: an index, a number, a record set 44 years ago, and an ocean still warming into winter.

What happens next is mostly a matter of watching the rain. If the peak comes in above 2.40°C, the record books get rewritten in March, when NOAA publishes the December–February reading. But the record is not really the point. The point is that the floods in Florida arrived before the event peaked — before the wettest months, before the atmospheric rivers, before the winter storms the pattern is known for. The preview is already a 1-in-1,000-year event. The main show has not started yet.