NOAA said in June that El Niño had arrived, and forecasters now expect this one to become very strong. That matters because the warming pattern can tilt winter weather toward heavier rain in parts of the Southern United States and Southern California, while the relief it offers to wildfire danger may not arrive until next year.
Andrew Hoell said the helping effect in much of the United States will not be felt until sometime next year. In practical terms, that means the weather shift that could soften wildfire conditions is not an immediate answer for places still watching flames spread across Canada and the American West.
El Niño is the flip side of La Niña, which brought cool ocean water to South America’s Pacific coast and helped keep the Southern U.S. drier through early 2026. The cycle tends to show up every two to seven years and can last up to a year. When winds over the Pacific from the Americas toward Asia die down, warm tropical water sloshes back toward the Americas. The air above it warms, pressure drops and storms begin to form, with a strengthened Pacific jet stream pulling from Canada down over the Southern U.S.
That pattern can be useful, but it is not a guarantee. NOAA researchers found that El Niño’s wet fall, winter and spring seasons often bring a notably milder wildfire season the following summer, yet the benefit depends on how the season actually unfolds. Strong El Niños significantly tilt the odds of expected weather outcomes during the winter, and for Southern California that means a higher chance of above-average rainfall. But extra rain can also bring flooding and landslide risks, which is why a wetter forecast is not the same thing as a clean win.
John Abatzoglou said the climate cycle is giving forecasters early prognostics, which is better than having nothing, but he added that things can change quite a bit. He also noted that strong El Niños do not erase uncertainty; they just push the odds. Hoell and his colleagues examined nearly four decades of El Niño and La Niña oscillations and wildfire burn areas, and their work points to a clear but limited takeaway: if the forecast holds, the weather pattern could begin to reduce wildfire risk only after the wet fall, winter and spring seasons arrive, sometime next year.
