Monterey County officials remain flexible as an El Niño event is underway.

Every two to seven years, El Niño generates buzz among scientists, government officials and communities wondering what impacts it could have across California.

With another El Niño event underway, Brian Garcia, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Monterey office, says it’s important to understand what the climate pattern is, and what it isn’t.

“El Niño is not weather,” Garcia says. “It is an anomalous area of warm sea-surface temperature water across the equatorial Pacific. It can have an outsized influence on how weather acts around the world, but it doesn’t make the weather itself.”

El Niño “tilts the odds” toward wetter winters, he says, but doesn’t guarantee an extreme winter everywhere. On July 9, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said there was an 81-percent chance of a “very strong” El Niño from October through December, and expected to persist into early spring.

“When we go back and look at previous ‘very strong’ events, each of those behaved somewhat differently,” Garcia says.

In Monterey County specifically, El Niño could manifest in a wetter winter, though scientists won’t know how severe impacts could be until individual storms are much closer. It could bring larger swells, higher water levels and increased coastal erosion as unusually warm water off Mexico fuels tropical storms in the Eastern Pacific.

And it could also mean thunderstorms, even as peak fire season continues.

“We are still very much in fire season,” says Kelsey Scanlon, director of emergency management. She explains they stay in constant contact with fire, law and National Weather Service partners year-round. Since the 2023 Pajaro flood (which occurred before the last El Niño), the County has invested in swiftwater rescue teams and high-water vehicles.

“Whether it’s the driest winter ever or the worst winter ever, we still have the same capabilities that we’ve been investing into for the last decade,” Scanlon says.

At a meeting of the Big Sur Multi-Agency Advisory Council on Friday, July 17, officials said the U.S. Forest Service is planning prescribed burns in Los Padres National Forest and forming an internal task force to plan for El Niño-related impacts on trails and roads.

The risk of landslides are elevated during El Niño events. “At Regents, we’re trying to be proactive in light of what storm systems are saying are coming,” Aaron Henkel from Caltrans said.

The nonprofit Community Association of Big Sur has been encouraging neighbors to restock supplies, prepare for extended power outages and make sure they’re ready for periods of isolation if roads close.

“That kind of preparedness has always been part of living in Big Sur,” CABS Executive Director Rachel Goldberger said in a statement to the Weekly. “We held one exercise this spring and have another planned for the fall to help coordinate our response to scenarios like landslides or extended road closures that could isolate Big Sur. Every disaster is different, so flexibility is key.”