>El Niño - "the little one," in Spanish - sounds innocent enough, but coastal California homeowners are making big preparations for powerful winter storms made more likely by the weather phenomenon of the same name.
>Residents are taking warnings about this year's El Niño - one of the strongest on record - so seriously that service providers responsible for battening down the hatches on homes and businesses say they are being inundated with calls.
>El Niño is a phenomenon in which warming sea-surface temperatures far out in the Pacific change normal wind cycles and alter weather patterns in the atmosphere worldwide. For California, that is expected to mean a "wetter-than-average" winter, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast last month.
>And it could be quite a bit wetter than average.
https://archive.is/VY8jS