The U.S. Pacific Coast and Southwest: High-Tide, Storm Flooding Risk El Niño’s other signature North American impact is a wetter, stormier winter across California and the Southwest United States, driven by a southward-displaced, strengthened jet stream that increases the frequency and intensity of atmospheric rivers making landfall on the West Coast. NOAA’s outlook for May 2026 through April 2027 forecasts that a typical U.S. coastal location could experience 7 to 12 days of high- tide flooding, potentially setting a new record, concentrated on the Pacific coast during the cool season. • Los Angeles County’s beaches, which draw an estimated 70 million day-visits annually and support tens of thousands of tourism and recreation jobs, illustrate the stakes: county officials have formally linked El Niño-driven coastal flooding and erosion risk to long-term destination viability, prompting a countywide Coastal Resilience Initiative built around living shorelines and sediment management rather than only storm response. For winter 2026–27, that exposure is compounded inland: county modeling gives a 60 to 80 percent chance of debris flows in Palisades canyons scarred by the January 2025 fires, a risk that affects access to coastal and canyon recreation. • California has already moved from forecast to formal preparedness. On September 21, 2026, the governor declared a statewide state of emergency ahead of the expected El Niño, directing state emergency managers to pre- position resources and the Coastal Commission to act on emergency coastal permits within 24 hours. California destination organizations should align their winter messaging with state and county emergency guidance from the outset.
For destinations that depend on outdoor recreation, wine country access or coastal beach tourism, this precipitation can be either an asset or a liability depending on intensity, location and timing. • The 1997–98 El Niño cycle delivered record rainfall to California and, combined with abnormally high sea levels, caused hundreds of millions of dollars in flood and storm damage in the San Francisco Bay Area; at Point Reyes National Seashore, 95 percent of trails were closed at one point due to downed trees, erosion and washouts, with some closures lasting more than a year. • The Pacific Northwest coast, contrary to the typical pattern, was struck by an unusually severe sequence of six major offshore storms between 1997 and 2000, generating waves exceeding 33 feet and causing substantial coastal erosion damage to state parks along the Oregon and Washington coasts. The Southern United States and Snowbird Destinations: Potential Counter-Cyclical Demand El Niño winter cycles have historically meant good business for snowbird destinations in the southern United States. Florida, Arizona and the broader Sun Belt depend heavily on a seasonal influx of snowbirds—an estimated one million part-year residents in Florida alone, alongside the state’s approximately 143 million annual visitors — whose spending is driven primarily by warmer weather. • Canadian snowbirds alone are estimated to contribute close to $1.4 billion annually to Arizona’s economy, and milder, wetter El Niño winters in the Southeast and Southwest do not discourage this demand. Indeed, colder and
ECONOMIC AND TOURISM IMPACTS ACROSS SIX EL NIÑO CYCLES
St. Augustine, FL
Analysis of El Niño cycles since 1991 shows that individual cycles’ impact tends to be highly localized and often counterintuitive, splitting winners from losers within the same cycle, the same year and sometimes the same broader region. Some areas of the Western United States and Canada see snowfall drop well below normal in strong years, while other parts experience near-normal seasons. Meanwhile, warm-weather seasonal destinations tend to benefit as colder winters elsewhere drive visitors south.
The Western U.S. and Canada Ski and Winter-Sports Corridor: Recurring Exposure El Niño has historically had a highly uneven impact on western U.S. and Canadian winter destination organizations, often producing sharply different outcomes even within the same event and across the same broader region. A single strong episode can bring drought to one area while delivering near-normal or above- normal snowfall to a neighboring region within a hundred miles. These effects also compound with other climate signals, making El Niño alone an unreliable predictor of any single resort’s season. As a result, destination organizations and resort operators need to look beyond the headline strength of an El Niño event to understand its likely regional and local consequences.
• Spring snowpack across the western United States has declined by roughly 15 to 30 percent since the mid-20th century, with some of the steepest losses in Washington, Oregon and the Northern Rockies. El Niño winters compound that trend: in the Inland Northwest, seasonal snowfall has averaged about 70 percent of normal during El Niño years, and several strong events, including 1997–98, brought Spokane less than half its usual total. • In 2023–24, the El Niño cycle combined with a cold-phase Pacific Decadal Oscillation and an ongoing drought to decrease snowpack levels in British Columbia, forcing many winter resorts to delay openings by weeks.
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