Is the 2026–27 "super El Niño" going to soak San Diego this winter?

You've probably heard that this is shaping up to be one of the strongest El Niños ever measured. That part is true. The part that doesn't follow automatically is "so San Diego will flood." El Niño tilts the odds toward a wet Southern California winter. It does not guarantee one, and San Diego has a recent, very public example of a monster El Niño that fizzled here.

What the official forecast actually says

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center issued its El Niño Advisory update on September 10, 2026: "El Niño is strengthening, with a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2026–27." Its seasonal outlook a week later translated that into rain odds. For California, the probability of a wetter-than-normal season climbs through the winter, "reaching a maximum of 50–60 percent near the coast during DJF, JFM, and FMA" — that is, December through April.

What past strong El Niños did at the airport

The San Diego County Water Authority publishes the Lindbergh Field rainfall record by water year (October through September). Here is every strong or very strong El Niño winter in that record, against today's 9.79-inch normal.

Six of those seven winters beat the normal. The two famous ones, 1982–83 and 1997–98, came in near double. And then there's 2015–16, which was forecast as a "Godzilla El Niño" and delivered 8.18 inches — about 84% of today's normal. Northern California got the storms that year; San Diego mostly watched.

Why a huge El Niño can still miss us

El Niño changes the background pattern — a stronger, farther-south Pacific jet stream — but San Diego's rain arrives in a handful of big storms, usually atmospheric rivers. "What actually will happen depends on specific storms called atmospheric rivers, which do not dance to the tune of El Niño," Scripps research meteorologist Alexander Gershunov told CalMatters in August. His Scripps colleague Dan Cayan puts the other side of it: large El Niños "tend to tilt the odds toward more winter north Pacific storms and also larger ones." Tilted odds, not a sure thing — a season can hinge on whether two or three big storms aim at Los Angeles, San Diego or the Bay Area.

What that means for you

• —Plan for a wet winter, but don't cancel January plans on the strength of a headline — the forecast is odds, not a schedule.
• —Storm season here runs roughly October through April, and most of the rain falls December through March (February's normal is 2.20 inches, the wettest month).
• —The expensive surprises in El Niño years are rarely total rainfall. They're high surf stacking on top of king tides, and short bursts of heavy rain on small creeks — the January 2024 Chollas Creek flood damaged about 1,000 homes in one morning.
• —If you want flood insurance, the 30-day waiting period is the deadline that matters — see our flood insurance tip.