The late Saturday Night Live comedian Chris Farley once dressed up as “El Niño,” copping a professional wrestler vibe and daring tropical weather systems to take him on in a no-holds-barred cage match.

“El Niño is coming for you, and it ain’t gonna be pretty,” Farley shouted.

Forecasters are saying the same thing — albeit less colorfully — about our current El Niño, which reached “Super” El Niño status last week and could ultimately make Farley’s version look puny.

What’s the deal with El Niño anyway?

El Niño occurs when ocean water temperatures rise in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, disrupting tropical thunderstorms and atmospheric circulation and influencing the location and strength of the jet stream thousands of miles away.

For South Florida, the South Florida Water Management District presented an “unprecedented forecast” with rain totals more than double the average rainfall across the system.  

The current El Niño is a major reason the Atlantic hurricane season has been so slow this year. Storms get torn apart by wind shear before they can really get going. However, wind shear in the Gulf is less intense, and “those storms tend to really get going later in the season,” experts told PBS News. 

The current El Niño is set to peak at the end of 2026 and effects will continue into 2027. And if the past is any guide to the present, buckle up:

  • The 2019 El Niño brought rainfall 3-8 inches above normal to much of South Florida.
  • The strong 2015–2016 El Niño pattern caused the wettest winter and January on record across South and Central Florida.
  • The El Niño of 1997-1998 produced major tornado outbreaks, including twisters that killed 42 across central Florida on Feb. 22, 1998.

Predictions based on off-the-charts sea surface temperature anomalies in the Pacific show that our current El Niño could wind up being the strongest on record — and could cause even more chaos, especially with respect to flooding.

Everglades as shock absorber

It’s no instant fix, of course, but a healthy Everglades — with adequate water storage and filter marshes — can help mitigate the impact of a changing climate by making us more resilient.

Robust, hydrated wetlands act like a giant sponge, soaking up excess rainwater and curtailing flooding. Ongoing restoration projects throughout south Florida will expand the system’s water storage capacity, but these projects on the books and in the works won’t be enough; in a warming world we’re going to need more large-scale water storage, and there’s only one place for it in the Everglades region: south of Lake Okeechobee.

That’s why Friends of the Everglades is advocating to “Rescue the River of Grass” by using existing state land-acquisition dollars to buy about 100,000 additional acres for water storage and treatment. Doing so would provide extra insurance against flooding and damaging discharges to the northern estuaries — while providing a nature-based source of water to rehydrate the southern Everglades at the right times of year.

The bottom line

El Niños may become stronger as climate change and warmer ocean temperatures supercharge the natural cycle. Resilience is key to adapting to these changing conditions; and few options provide more benefits across the board than Rescuing the River of Grass.

This update is part of an advocacy series:
Everglades Unfiltered: Straight talk about water, wildlife and wild places — and the forces that impact them.

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