Heavy rain and mudslides in California, flooding in Texas, and up to 2 feet of snowin North Carolina — all these recent weather events are symptoms of the infamous climate phenomena called El Niño. For months now we have been on the verge of an official El Niño, but so far the climate community has not pulled the El Niño trigger. Officially there is an "El Niño Watch," but an El Niño Alert may be issued any day, indicating the phenomena has officially begun.
The El Niño phenomenon is, by definition, a periodic warming of the waters in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific Ocean. When this happens vast amounts of heat is released into the atmosphere. This heat disrupts normal weather steering patterns, which can have big consequences to global and regional weather.
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