The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officially declared El Niño in June 2026 and projects it will strengthen into the 2026-2027 winter, with a peak expected between November and January. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center places the probability of an extreme El Niño event at greater than 60%, based on multiple statistical and physical models. Sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Eastern Pacific showed anomalous warmth as of June 2026, confirmed by NOAA satellite imagery.
Catastrophe modeler Karen Clark & Company (KCC) published a July 2026 white paper analyzing the event's impacts on global weather patterns and loss potential. El Niño is associated with reduced North Atlantic hurricane activity and an active typhoon season in the Northwest Pacific. It is also linked to flooding in California, East Africa, and Peru, along with drought in Australia and Indonesia, the report noted.
Despite the favorable hurricane outlook, KCC cautioned that the relationship between El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phase and insured losses is even weaker than the correlation with storm activity. The report described hurricane losses as following a real estate principle: "the three most important things are location, location, location." KCC noted that ENSO "has relatively little predictive power for a given year."
The report estimated that one major hurricane striking Miami, Tampa, or Houston could cause insured losses exceeding $100 billion today. Hurricane Andrew, which made landfall during a below-normal season in 1992, would produce losses of $115 billion at today's exposure levels, the report calculated. In 2020, a La Niña year that broke records for named storms with six hurricane landfalls, insured losses were about average.
The same caution applies to wildfire risk in California, where El Niño-linked atmospheric rivers and flooding can suppress fire activity. KCC noted that the 2018 Camp Fire, at the time the costliest wildfire in California history, occurred during a developing El Niño.
KCC said the jet stream shift could increase severe convective storm (SCS) activity in the US Southeast in spring 2027 if the pattern persists. In contrast, SCS activity may be reduced across the Central US and much of the Great Plains. California may see increased atmospheric rivers and flooding but reduced wildfire activity as a result of the enhanced subtropical jet stream.
Steve Bennett, head of climate science and catastrophe modeling at Mercury Insurance, said the pattern should be read carefully. "El Niño influences probabilities, not certainties. It is an important signal, but it is only one piece of a much larger weather puzzle," he said. Private flood premiums in the US fell from $803 million in 2023 to $730 million in 2024, per National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) data.
In the Northwest Pacific, El Niño produces longer-lived and more intense tropical cyclones, with storms more likely to affect Japan and Korea, the reported noted. The 1997 Northwest Pacific season during the previous strong El Niño set records for accumulated cyclone energy and produced 10 Category-5-equivalent tropical cyclones. Europe may also see more frequent winter storms tracking into Western Europe when ENSO is in its warm phase.
Colorado State University puts the 2026 probability of a major US hurricane landfall at 32%, against a historical average of 43%. US natural catastrophe insured losses averaged $100 billion annually between 2023 and 2025, per the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I). Hurricane and tropical storm losses account for 38.2% of total US catastrophe losses, behind tornadoes at 39.9%, based on industry data.
KCC incorporates ENSO directly into its catastrophe models and assigns a synthetic ENSO phase to each year in its 100,000-year stochastic event catalogs. The methodology uses a red noise process to account for the autocorrelation between successive months in the ENSO cycle.
