Predictions of a strong El Niño bring hope of California drought relief.

KQED and others have called it California's "Great Wet Hope." The phrase, while borderline porny (you can riff from there—lawn watering is still BARELY LEGAL!), speaks to the stakes of the strong El Niño experts now say is heading Cali way.

A July 9 Climate Prediction Center report pins the chance of an El Niño in the 2015-16 water year at 90 percent, with an 80-percent chance it'll last through next spring. Perhaps more importantly, forecasters predict this El Niño will be "significant," which means it might actually bring higher-than-average rainfall to the desperately thirsty state.

Weak to moderate El Niños don't necessarily cause more rain, which California saw on painful display last year. In July 2014, a National Weather Service forecaster told the Weekly an El Niño event was almost certain to occur, though he didn't expect it to be a particularly strong one. By August, meteorologists were dialing back even those expectations, saying an El Niño, if it came at all, would probably be too wimpy to bring much rain to California in the 2014-15 water year.

They were right: With the water year over, 95 percent of the state is still in a severe drought. 

But experts sound more confident that this year's Niño will be a hearty one. From the KQED story:

“Not a puny El Niño but a Godzilla El Niño,” adds Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena.

“This is much stronger than we’ve seen — this is the biggest signal since 1997.”

That was that last one that Patzert would assign “Godzilla” status. That winter San Francisco got double its usual rainfall and the state was pounded with rain and snow, causing major flooding and landslides. While that could happen this time, it would also top up badly depleted reservoirs.