Federal forecasters give 81% odds that El Niño turns very strong by late fall

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center put the odds of a very strong El Niño at 81 percent for the October-through-December period in its official ENSO discussion issued July 9, 2026, and forecast that the pattern now in place will keep strengthening through the rest of the year. For Gainesville and Cooke County, the National Weather Service office in Fort Worth says an El Niño shifts the seasonal odds on temperature and rainfall across the North Texas side of Texoma without settling what any given season will actually deliver.

The Climate Prediction Center, part of NOAA, said in its June 11, 2026 ENSO Diagnostic Discussion that El Niño conditions had developed. That document projected the pattern would gain strength heading into the winter of 2026-27, and the July discussion carried the outlook further.

"Very strong" is a defined term at the agency. Its official ENSO strength table sets the mark at a Relative Oceanic Niño Index reading of at least positive 2.0 degrees Celsius. The same table carries a caution the Climate Prediction Center repeats: a stronger event raises the chances of the impacts usually associated with El Niño, but it does not make any of them certain in a particular place.

Events that clear the 2.0-degree line are uncommon. Measured against that threshold, the agency's RONI record shows two in roughly the past 30 years, during 1997-98 and 2015-16, before the current one. The record lists five older episodes at that level, in 1957-58, 1965-66, 1972-73, 1982-83 and 1991-92.

The clearest local signal, according to the Fort Worth forecast office, shows up in spring. Its published guidance on how ENSO behaves in North and Central Texas describes a 70 to 90 percent preference toward above-normal precipitation during those months in ENSO years. That wetter lean is generally followed by a tendency toward drier conditions in the second half of summer.

Winter is harder to call in this part of the state. The Fort Worth office describes El Niño's influence on winter precipitation here as weaker, because other large-scale circulation patterns also shape how the season turns out.

What the Climate Prediction Center has forecast is a probability that ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific reach a defined strength category. What the National Weather Service in Fort Worth has published is a set of seasonal tendencies drawn from past ENSO years, which the office describes as probabilistic rather than guaranteed for any single season in Cooke County.