This particular map, from 2016, shows one of the strongest El Ninos on record. Photo: NOAA Putting climate events into layman’s terms is an art form. For example, when a scientist realizes that we’ve become too desensitized to the roller coaster rides of El Niños, some feel it’s necessary to dub the more extreme ones “Super El Niños.”

Wanna up the ante when you see an El Niño coming with the potential to squash that Super El Niño?

What else could accomplish that better than a “Godzilla El Niño“? Both terms have been thrown around a lot by forecasters to articulate what may be on deck this year — an El Niño brewing with the potential to match the 1997-1998, or 2015-2016 El Niños. Both are hyperbolic by definition because they’re just figures of speech. Paul Roundy, an atmospheric scientist at the University at Albany, wasn’t using hyperbole when he expressed that the incoming climate event has “real potential for the strongest El Niño event in 140 years.” Real potential for the strongest El Niño event in 140 years.

https://t.co/aT9IdIg4Fn — Paul Roundy (@PaulRoundy1) April 5, 2026 Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasted the the incoming El Niño is likely to arrive by August. The institution’s next monthly diagnostics discussion will actually be released on Thursday, April 9, and if the incoming report follows recent trends, the arrival timeline or intensity (or both) could be officially moved up. But it’s not just NOAA forecasters monitoring developments. Roundy’s remarks this week came just after the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts released its own April report. Those models expect El Niño conditions to arrive by July.

Another climate scientist from Columbia University expressed to the San Francisco Chronicle this week that forecasters from Europe, NASA, and Australia, are all predicting this will be a “strong El Niño,” adding credibility to the expectations. “The consistent thing across all those events is much larger waves and very high incidents of beach erosion.

What’s been random is the rainfall, and people are trying to understand those atmospheric patterns better,” Patrick Barnard, Research Director of UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Coastal Climate Resilience told The Inertia in March. “What we may see is that we have massive storms in the Pacific still being generated during El Niños, which bring really, really big waves to California. But the storms (and their rainfall) have been going further north, not hammering Southern and Central California as they have in the past.” Newsletter Only the best. We promise. Contribute Join our community of contributors. Apply