Worst Weather in Decades About to Begin - It Could Be Catastrophic

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Go buy yourself a good pair of rain boots and start stocking up on food because a Godzilla El Niño might be on the way. If it really happens, parts of the southern United States and southern Europe could soon be hit by intense rainfall and face a much higher risk of flooding.

[00:00:19]The same goes for South America. A series of catastrophic rainstorms could flood roads and trigger huge mudslides in countries like Peru and Ecuador.

[00:00:28]While some places deal with too much rain, others may get none at all.

[00:00:33]Indonesia and Australia, for example, might experience severe drought, which [music] could cause massive wildfires and wipe out their water supplies.

[00:00:43]Experts think El Niño could happen sometime between June and August of 2026 and stick around until the end of the year. There's even a one in three chance it could turn into a super El Niño by late fall. I mean, a really intense catastrophic version of this event that's also known as the Godzilla El Niño.

[00:01:04]The problem is, [music] even if you're in part of the world that isn't directly affected by this phenomenon, you might [music] see its consequences anyway because it can ruin crops and cause global food shortages. That makes your everyday groceries like rice, coffee, and sugar way more expensive. No one wants that, but it's not like we can avoid El Niño. It's just a natural part of Earth's climate that's been happening for millions of years.

[00:01:29]It all starts in the Pacific Ocean. And since this ocean is so huge, whatever happens there kind of ripples across the whole planet. You see, under normal climate conditions, tropical winds blow west along the equator, pushing warm surface water from South America toward Asia. As that warm water moves away, cold water rises up from the deep ocean to take its place. We call this process [music] upwelling. But the Earth always likes to surprise us, right? So, from time to time, a cycle known as ENSO shows [music] up and breaks those rules.

[00:02:03]This natural cycle is divided into three phases: La Niña, El Niño, and an in-between stage where things are relatively quiet, known as [music] ENSO neutral.

[00:02:13]La Niña is the cold phase. When it happens, those tropical winds get even stronger than usual, shoving more warm water toward Asia.

[00:02:22]Near the Americas, super cold water from the deep ocean rushes up to the surface.

[00:02:28]This shifts the jet stream, those high-altitude winds that steer our weather, further north.

[00:02:33]For the US, a La Niña year usually means a warmer, drier south and a much colder, rainier north.

[00:02:40]It also tends to make hurricane seasons in the Atlantic way more active and dangerous.

[00:02:46]El Niño is the exact opposite. [music] It is the hot phase. This is when the tropical winds weaken or even reverse.

[00:02:55]The sea surface temperatures can reach 9° [music] Fahrenheit above their normal levels.

[00:02:59]Instead of being pushed away, all that warm water flows back east toward the Americas. This pulls the jet stream way south of where it usually is, and that changes the weather completely. Areas in the northern US and Canada stay warmer and drier than usual, while the southeast and the Gulf Coast gets soaked with constant rain and flooding.

[00:03:22]El Niño and La Niña episodes tend to happen every 3 to 7 years, with each phase usually sticking around for about a year. But, don't [music] expect a fixed schedule. It happened At the beginning of 2026, the world is watching it all unfold again. A weak La Niña is finally fading away, and little by little, it's turning into an El Niño.

[00:03:42]>> [music] >> And experts think it could be a massive one.

[00:03:45]All the signs from the ocean and the atmosphere show a powerful El Niño pattern picking up speed as we head toward the fall.

[00:03:53]If the water keeps warming up at this rate, some meteorologists believe this event could become exceptionally strong.

[00:04:00]A super El Niño is on a whole different level. It happens when the Pacific gets so warm that it basically throws the world's weather off balance. This can lead to much more extreme weather shifts.

[00:04:12]Instead of just a little more rain, you get massive floods. Instead of a short period of dry weather, you get a serious drought. This event also pushes storms into places they don't normally go, and that ends up affecting the whole world.

[00:04:27]If you're not a big fan of summer, I have bad news.

[00:04:31]A new Godzilla El Niño is probably going to push global temperatures to record-breaking heights. It's going to be unbearably hot.

[00:04:40]The last time the world had to deal with a super El Niño was back in 2015.

[00:04:45]That year, the water in the Pacific got incredibly hot, and that set off a chain reaction of disasters around the globe.

[00:04:52]The hurricane season was unlike anything we'd ever seen. Usually, we see four or five tropical cyclones in the Pacific, but in 2015, there were 16.

[00:05:02]That's insane. At one point, three massive Category 4 hurricanes, named Kilo, Ignacio, and Jimena, were all spinning at the exact same time out at sea.

[00:05:14]That was a first since we started keeping track. Luckily, none of them actually hit land.

[00:05:20]But we weren't always that lucky. In July 2015, Hurricane Dolores sent record-breaking rain into Southern California, [music] causing over $50 million in damage. Later that same year, Hurricane Marty hit the coast of Mexico, leading to another $30 million in losses.

[00:05:39]South America was hit with way more rain than usual. Rivers in Argentina and Paraguay overflowed, forcing thousands of people to evacuate.

[00:05:48]Because of El Niño, 2015 became the hottest year on record at that time, and it brought terrible droughts.

[00:05:56]In Ethiopia, for example, some parts of the country got less than a third of their usual rain. Crops failed big time, and over 8 million people were left without enough food.

[00:06:08]So, are we going to face something that intense again?

[00:06:11]Well, it's hard to say. Most experts agree that an El Niño is in fact coming, but we're still not sure about its strength.

[00:06:19]Early data shows everything from a weak event to a record-breaking super El Niño. Scientists are watching it closely, but they need a few more months to see how it actually behaves.

[00:06:32]The El Niño is expected to show up by summer. Usually, we don't feel the effects right away, but since this one is moving so fast, we might start seeing weird weather sooner than usual.

[00:06:43]One big change we can expect [music] has to do with the Atlantic hurricane season, and that's good news for the US.

[00:06:51]Usually, the El Niño lowers the overall numbers of hurricanes in the Atlantic.

[00:06:55]That's because it creates high air pressure and stronger winds high up in the sky that basically rip the storms apart before they can grow.

[00:07:04]In this part of the US, this makes the whole atmosphere more stable, which stops small storms from powering up into giant hurricanes.

[00:07:12]But, the main impact of El Niño usually happens in winter, and it messes with the snow.

[00:07:18]If you live in the northern US or the Midwest, you will probably see a lot less snow than usual.

[00:07:24]Of course, these are all just predictions based on what happened in previous years, but it's not [music] a perfect science. After all, we never see the exact same weather 2 years in [music] a row, and when you throw an El Niño into the mix, things get even more unpredictable.

[00:07:39]One thing's for sure, since this phenomenon affects millions of people, experts have to keep a close eye on it every year.

[00:07:46]Seasonal forecasts for El Nino and La Nina, too, show how the weather is likely to change, helping authorities plan ahead for energy and water needs.

[00:07:56]This way, cities can prepare for too much rain or severe drought, and farmers know what to expect for their crops.

[00:08:04]But most importantly, weather alerts let people find shelters and get communities ready before disasters hit, and that saves lives.

[00:08:14]>> [music]