El Niño is an abnormal and rare sequence of weather that causes it to rain heavily.

Why is El Niño important? It will bring much needed rain to the very dry California that we so greatly need. When will it hit? El Niño is said to come this winter. There is a very probable chance that it will hit harder in Southern California. What California really needs is to get through this drought and pray for plenty of rain and snow. The snow is very important because as it melts we will be supplied with water in the dryer seasons compensating for our shortage. What about Northern California? For El Niño to affect Northern California it would have to be very strong, if we are lucky it will cover the whole state.

El Niño is characterized as the Pacific Ocean water west of Peru becomes warmer than normal. Some of the strongest El Niños came in 1982-83 and 1997-98. So far the charts show a very close resemblance between those years of El Niño and this one to come. This El Niño is said to be strong enough to bring floods to even low risk areas in California including an appearance in Northern California.

Although there is much uncertainty of where El Niño will hit and flood it is better to be safe than sorry. Convincing people of buying house insurance is going to be difficult because of this major drought we are in but the damage done by El Niño can be detrimental. More than 95% of California is in a drought according to the US Drought Monitor, so the presence of this El Niño is crucial.

Jay Famiglietti, Reporter for The Los Angeles Times in his article California has about one year of water stored. Will you ration now?  Famiglietti says “Groundwater reserves don’t replenish and the loss of water causes the ground to sink, while the reservoirs only contain a year’s worth of water.” This was posted in March of 2015. In other words  by March of 2016 all California’s water reserves would be dry. El Niños timing could not have been better.