On panel since 1525, when fishermen off Peru named the warm current for the child who arrives at Christmas.
Central project Moving the Pacific's warm water east, and the jet stream south with it.
Status Already here. Forecast to peak during our season.
Engagement Required, like everyone else's.
You are deciding whether to spend three months in a desert basin during a very strong El Niño.
Here is what is actually known, so you can decide with real information rather than with a mood.
Incubator Camp runs one house rule: every practitioner engages every practitioner's central project. El Niño arrives with a central project, so El Niño gets a listing on the panel and a page of its own. The listing is a joke. The page is not.
A recurring warm current that changes the odds, not the days.
El Niño is a warming of the eastern tropical Pacific that returns every two to seven years on no schedule anyone can hold. It has a sibling of the opposite temperament, La Niña, and the pair together are the largest year-to-year climate signal on the planet. Fishermen off Peru named it long before anyone measured it, because the warm water showed up around Christmas.
What it does to a season: it shifts probabilities. A very strong El Niño makes a wet, stormy, periodically cool winter much more likely in Southern California. It does not guarantee one, it does not schedule individual storms, and it does not rule out warm dry stretches or an occasional hot spell in the desert.
One correction worth making early. A very strong El Niño does not mean another hot winter at Bombay Beach. March 2026 was extraordinary, with Southern California's worst March heat wave on record and Woodland Hills reaching 102°F. Do not use March 2026 as a template for March 2027. The historical signal points the other way.
Trade winds slacken, the warm pool slides east, the storm track drops south.
In an ordinary year, trade winds pile the Pacific's warm surface water against Indonesia while cold water upwells off South America. In an El Niño year the winds slacken, the warm pool slides east, and the cold upwelling shuts down. Heat enters the atmosphere over the eastern Pacific. Convection follows the heat. The subtropical jet stream dives south and carries the storm track straight across the southern tier of North America.
Bombay Beach sits in that tier. That single fact is why this page exists.
Where the forecast stands
As of the August 2026 assessment, NOAA puts the chance of the 2026–27 El Niño becoming very strong during fall and winter at greater than ninety percent. The eastern tropical Pacific is already exceptionally warm.
Strong events push the storm track further south and aim moisture at Southern California, which raises the risk of heavy rainfall, flash flooding and debris flows. In a NOAA-hosted study covering 1901 to 2010, eight of ten moderate-to-strong El Niño events placed Southern California in the wettest third of winters during late winter. The relationship strengthens as the winter goes on, which is why March is the month to watch rather than December.
NOAA is also tracking unusually warm ocean water off Southern California alongside the developing El Niño. That adds a second, independent source of variability, so anomalous warmth is not off the table either.
Peak ONI values for strong and very strong events in NOAA's record since 1950. The 2026–27 bar is drawn from the current forecast range and is not a measurement. Values move monthly. Verify against the NOAA Climate Prediction Center before you rely on any of this.
The forecast sharpens between now and December. By late November there will be a substantially better picture of what January through March 2027 is setting up to be. Check it before you commit. We will publish what we learn as it arrives.
Heat becomes water. Water becomes wind. Wind becomes ground.
On a dry lake bed, ground is the last term in the chain, and ground is what we live on. Here is the chain translated into a calendar.
What to actually bring, build and expect.
The Salton Sea basin reacts dramatically when significant rain hits normally dry terrain. None of the following is dramatic. All of it is ordinary desert competence, applied earlier than usual.
- Elevate everything. Sleeping platforms, storage, and anything electrical sits off the ground. Water finds the lowest thing you own.
- Plan drainage in December. Grade away from every structure while the ground is dry and workable. February is too late to dig.
- Tie down for wind, not for weather. Shade structures and light panels are the first things to leave. Rate every anchor higher than you think you need.
- Assume the playa becomes clay. Wet lake bed turns slick, then sticky, then takes days to firm. Park on hard ground and stay off soft ground entirely.
- More warm layers than a desert suggests. Wet cold at night is a different problem than dry cold, and it is the one people underpack for.
- Genuine rain gear and a second pair of boots. One pair will be drying at all times.
- Waterproof storage for anything that matters. Instruments, notebooks, drives, cameras.
- A vehicle, if you have one. A working vehicle in camp is a real contribution to the group, and never more so than in a wet year.
- Patience with the schedule. Some weeks will move indoors. The program still gets taught.
And the other half, equally true
A wet Colorado Desert winter is the condition that produces a superbloom. The same storms that make the mud make a flowering that most people who live in California never get to see. If the forecast holds, the 2027 season may end inside one.
The same system makes the mud and the flowers.
Do not take our word for the weather.
The NOAA Climate Prediction Center publishes an ENSO diagnostic discussion on the second Thursday of every month, along with the current Niño 3.4 anomaly and the seasonal outlook. That discussion is the source everything on this page traces back to.
Read it before you commit, read it again in November, and read it once more in December. The picture will be considerably clearer each time.
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