One of El Niño's most dramatic effects is waiting in the wings and could soon cause chaos along the West Coast, especially in California, forecasters warned.
A historic El Niño is expected to up the intensity of atmospheric rivers – long corridors of water vapor in the atmosphere that can transport tremendous amounts of moisture and produce heavy rain or snow when they reach land.
"A stronger El Niño brings stronger atmospheric rivers," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, told USA TODAY. "There aren't necessarily more of them, but atmospheric rivers are more intense during a strong El Niño like this one."
In addition, strong El Niños also increase the frequency of non-atmospheric river storms in California, he said.
"Amid an El Niño that will become the strongest, and also easternmost-centered, event on record (if it isn't already), this year's tilt in the odds toward wet and stormy conditions in California will be profoundly unsubtle," Swain wrote this week on his blog Weather West.
Often in the winter, you'll hear that "atmospheric rivers" are causing big weather problems along the West Coast. But what are they?
Made visible by clouds, these ribbons of water vapor extend thousands of miles from the tropics to the western U.S. At 250 to 375 miles wide, they provide the fuel for massive rain and snowstorms that can cause flooding along the West Coast.
In general, atmospheric rivers pick up water vapor from the warm, moist air of tropical regions and then drop the water over land in cooler regions as rain or snow.
Some atmospheric rivers can stretch as far as 5,000 miles, all the way from Asia.
Though beneficial for water supplies, such events can wreak havoc on travel, bring deadly mudslides and cause catastrophic damage to life and property, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
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