Historically strong 2026 Super El Niño could have this devastating effect on California

A lot has been written about how this year’s Super El Niño is likely to be the strongest on record and could result in extreme weather through 2027. But what we are just learning now, is how it may cause serious damage to California’s coast, impacting sea levels, and possibly triggering floods. El Niño is forecast to raise sea levels along California’s coast by about a foot by the middle of next month, according to oceanographer Dillon Amaya at North Carolina State University, CNN reported. That’s because the climate pattern will push water from Mexico and Central America north up to the U.S. coastline. That may, in turn, trigger “Kelvin waves”—which unlike typical waves, “slosh up and down, like water in a bathtub,” where they, are, in effect, stuck, according to CNN. “Typically, we think of El Niño and its impact on precipitation, but some of the first indications that El Niño is really occurring are the arrival of these coastally trapped waves,” Amaya told CNN. At the same time El Niño is expected to produce those waves and higher sea levels, California is also expecting regularly occuring King Tides, or “astronomically high tides,” climate scientist Daniel Swain at the Univers…