"Evidence Mounts for El Nino That Could Ease Calif. Drought"

"LOS ANGELES -- Evidence is mounting that the El Nino ocean-warming phenomenon in the Pacific will spawn a rainy winter in California, potentially easing the state's punishing drought but also bringing the risk of chaotic storms like those that battered the region in the late 1990s.

In the clearest warning yet that Southern California could be due for a deluge, meteorologists said in a report last week that the already strong El Nino has a 95 percent chance of lasting through the winter before weakening in the spring.

'This is as close as you're going to get to a sure thing,' said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, calling this El Nino 'too big to fail.'"

Brian Melley reports for the Associated Press October 12, 2015.

SEE ALSO:

"El Niño Could Leave 4 Million People in Pacific Without Food Or Drinking Water" (Guardian)

"Australia Says Strong Indian Ocean Dipole Reinforcing El Nino" (Reuters)

"El Nino Could Make Asia’s Choking Haze Even Worse" (Bloomberg)

"Commodities Prices Are Heating Up on El Niño" (Wall Street Journal)