As of August, NOAA and IRI forecasters are predicting this El Niño will peak in the late fall/early winter with 3-month-average sea surface temperatures in the Niño3.4 region near or exceeding 2.0°C (3.6°F) above normal. If this forecast comes true, it will place the 2015 event among the strongest El Niños in the (admittedly short) 1950-2015 historical record. What would this mean for expected impacts in the United States?
Sea surface temperature anomalies (departures from the long-term average) increased in much of the equatorial Pacific during July. The July average in the Niño3.4 region was +1.2°C above normal according to the ERSST monitoring datasets. The atmospheric features observed in the equatorial Pacific region during July show that the El Niño ocean-atmosphere coupling is cranking along: easterly winds near the surface were consistently weaker than normal, as were the westerly winds in the upper levels of the atmosphere, and satellites saw more clouds than average in the central and eastern Pacific.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/august-2015-el-ni%C3%B1o-update-supercalifragilisticexpealidocious
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