The record El Niño and Britain's winter: what 75 years of Met Office data show

How strong is the 2026 El Niño?

El Niño is measured in the central Pacific, in a box called Niño 3.4, and NOAA's weekly reading there now stands at +3.4°C above normal (week centred on 28 October 2026). In the week centred on 21 October 2026 it read +3.4°C, the highest in a weekly series that starts in September 1981. Before this year the highest week was +3.0°C, centred on 18 November 2015; the week of 16 September 2026 equalled it, and every week since has been higher.

NOAA's official measure is slower: the Oceanic Niño Index, a three-month average that begins in 1950. Its latest value is +2.46°C (ASO 2026). For July to September 2026 it read +2.16°C, the highest July–September value on the index; the nearest were 1997 (+1.79°C) and 2015 (+1.73°C). The three giant events of the past peaked at +2.14°C (1982–83), +2.37°C (1997–98) and +2.59°C (2015–16); by July to September 2026 this one had already passed the first of those on NOAA's index, with the other two still ahead of it.

The Met Office said on 22 September that the event “has now exceeded previous records, making it the strongest event in the observational record”. On 23 September it said it expected further strengthening over the next couple of months, with a peak in November or December. Its outlook of 26 October describes “a very strong and already unprecedented El Niño event, with further strengthening expected this month, which is likely to persist through this period”. NOAA's discussion of 8 October kept its El Niño Advisory and said “El Niño continues to strengthen, with a strong-to-very strong El Niño likely through January-March 2027”; its next discussion is on 12 November.

NOAA also puts the chance of a “historic” event at 83% for October to December, meaning one stronger than every El Niño since 1950 on its relative three-month index, which measures the Pacific against the tropical oceans as a whole and is a different scale from the weekly figure above. Our El Niño tracker carries each new NOAA reading as it is published.

What is the latest Met Office winter forecast for the UK?

The Met Office's three-month outlook for November 2026 to January 2027, issued on 26 October, is the latest official word. Against normal odds of 20% for each outer category and 60% for near-average, it gives wet 40%, dry 10%, mild 30%, cold 15%, windy 25% and calm 15%, the same as its October to December outlook of 28 September. Its chart captions read “Likelihood leans towards wet” for rain, “Likelihood leans towards Mild” for temperature and “Likelihood leans slightly towards windy” for wind; in September the rain caption said “leans strongly towards wet”. It also adds that “the likelihood of near average or dry conditions remains significant”. The baseline is 1991 to 2020.

For November alone, the outlook gives wet 30% (1.5 times the normal chance), mild 35%, cold 5% and windy 20%, and says “the chance of a cold month is small”. The chances of a windy or a calm November are balanced, which it says “does not preclude impacts from windy or stormy weather”.

Among its drivers, the outlook lists “a very strong and already unprecedented El Niño event” and says El Niño “can increase the chances of wetter, stormier conditions for northwest Europe during the autumn and early winter”. It sees “a signal for lower-than-normal pressure in the vicinity of the UK, meaning an increased chance of spells of unsettled weather”, in a pattern “similar to the pattern associated with previous El Niño events at this time of year”. Then it draws the line itself: El Niño “alone cannot determine the type of weather expected and other outcomes remain possible”. The outlook covers the whole UK over three months and says it “does not identify which category will actually occur”.

On cold, the outlook says the chances of the three months being cold overall are reduced compared with normal, but that “this does not rule out impacts from cold weather, especially later in the period”. On 5 October the Met Office reviewed the snow headlines directly: “Dramatic nationwide snow and prolonged freezing conditions are not the central themes of the current forecast.”

The late-winter question is the polar vortex. The Met Office said on 23 September that after El Niño peaks, the stratospheric polar vortex “can become weaker, leading to an increased chance of Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) events”, “increasing the potential for cold weather”. On 5 October it added: “There is also nothing in the forecast that indicates changes in the polar vortex”, and any such change “would be at the end of the winter”. Each step is hedged: the vortex can weaken, which raises the chance of a warming, which raises the potential for cold.

Two other official voices say much the same. Copernicus, the EU's climate service, said on 10 October that “the ongoing El Niño event is the main feature in the latest C3S seasonal forecasts”, with above-average temperature and precipitation favoured across most of Europe; it does not single out the UK. The Government Office for Science said on 17 September that for October to December “there is a slightly increased chance of the UK experiencing stronger westerlies”, linked to “increased storminess and an increased risk of heavy rainfall and flooding”, and that the UK impacts “cannot be confidently predicted”. The next Met Office outlook is due on 30 November.

Some headlines have gone further. Stories on 11 October said the government and the Met Office had joined forces ahead of an “extreme” winter. What happened that day is that Defra set up a Flood and Drought Resilience Taskforce, with the Met Office one of more than 50 organisations on it. The government's announcement says “a more intense and wetter winter is now anticipated”, and the floods minister, Emma Hardy, said “we're facing extreme weather, with flood and drought intertwined”. Neither is a forecast of an extreme winter, and the Met Office's own outlook leans mild rather than cold.

What did past strong El Niños do to UK winters?

Forecasts are odds. Records are what happened, so we went back through them. We took every El Niño on NOAA's index since 1950 that peaked at +1.5°C or more, which gives 9 winters: 1957/58, 1965/66, 1972/73, 1982/83, 1991/92, 1997/98, 2009/10, 2015/16 and 2023/24. For each we read the Met Office's UK rainfall and temperature series and asked whether that winter was wetter or warmer than was normal for its own time, so that 1957 is judged against the 1950s rather than against today's warmer, wetter climate.

One result stands out. November and December were wetter than normal in 7 of the 9 strong El Niño winters; in the other 67 winters since 1950/51 the figure is 45%. We shuffled the winters 20,000 times to see how often nine picked at random would do as well, and the answer is about 1 in 45. The two exceptions were 1957/58 (18% drier than normal) and 1991/92 (9% drier); 2015/16's November–December was 52% wetter, the wettest of all 76 winters since 1950/51.

After December the signal fades. Whole-winter rainfall (December to February) was above normal in six of the nine, but chance alone would produce that about one time in five. Winter temperature shows no pattern: seven of nine were a little above trend, but the average gap is 0.2°C and it would turn up by chance about one time in four. February, the month the Met Office's cold-snap caveat points at, had two cold ones (1983 and 2010), which is no more than other winters produce.

The nine range widely, which is the point. 2009/10 was the third-coldest UK winter since 1950/51 at 1.6°C, and the coldest since 1978/79: from 17 December 2009 to 15 January 2010 the Met Office recorded “a spell of very low temperatures and significant snowfalls which affected almost the whole country”. At the other end, 1997/98, 2015/16 and 2023/24 were among the five mildest winters since 1950/51, and February 1998 at 6.8°C remains the warmest February in the UK series since 1884. Nine winters is a small sample: it can show a lean, it cannot promise a season.

The two most recent are the ones people remember. December 2015 was the UK's warmest December in the series since 1884 (7.9°C) and its wettest in the rainfall series since 1836 (216mm), with Storms Desmond, Eva and Frank in the one month. Winter 2023/24 was mild (5.3°C) and wet, and the 2023/24 season had 12 named storms, the most since naming began in 2015; but the Met Office's own review of that season, on 27 August 2024, put the storms down to the position of the jet stream and did not mention El Niño. We do not credit it either.

Which parts of the UK get the extra rain?

The Met Office publishes the same rainfall series for eleven regions, so we ran the November–December check on each. Averaged across the nine strong El Niño winters, North-west England and north Wales had 23% more rain than was normal for the time, and was wetter in six of the nine. Northern Ireland was 20% wetter (seven of nine), north-east and east England and Wales 19%, south-west England and south Wales 16%, the Midlands, East Scotland and West Scotland 15%, south-east and central southern England 13%, and East Anglia 11%.

North Scotland is the exception: 5% on average, wetter in only three of the nine, which is no signal at all. Everywhere else the lean was broad rather than local: every other region averaged between 11% and 23% more rain than normal for the time, and the largest figures were in north-west England and north Wales, Northern Ireland, Wales, and north-east and east England. Nine winters per region is still a small sample, and the regional figures are averages, not forecasts.

The north-west is also where the last record El Niño did its damage. Storm Desmond, on 5 and 6 December 2015, brought what the Met Office calls record-breaking rain: 405mm at Thirlmere in Cumbria in 38 hours, and its storm-season record says 5,200 homes flooded across Lancashire and Cumbria. The Environment Agency later said “Around 16,000 properties were affected” that winter across Cumbria, Northumberland, Lancashire, Yorkshire and Herefordshire, and that over 17,000 homes and businesses were flooded in December 2015 alone.

Then the lights went out. Floodwater breached the defences at Lancaster's main substation on the evening of 5 December; Electricity North West says that substation, at Caton Road, supplies 55,000 customers in Lancaster, Morecambe and Carnforth, and that is the measure we use. Professor Roger Kemp of Lancaster University wrote on 16 December 2015 that “all electricity supplies in the city were lost and stayed off until 6 am on Monday”, and the university's account of the event records mobile networks, the internet and cash machines failing with them. Electricity North West finished a £5.7 million flood-protection scheme at the site in November 2019.

Will El Niño end the drought?

Not by itself, and not quickly. The Environment Agency said on 15 October that “the usual seasonal rainfall has yet to arrive, and 82% of England remains in drought”, and the same day severe drought, “the highest level of drought that can be declared”, was declared for parts of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, East Sussex and West Sussex. 11 of the agency's areas are in drought on our drought tracker, and 10 hosepipe bans remain in force on our hosepipe-ban tracker.

England's reservoirs were 54% full on 20 October 2026, against 76% for the time of year, after September brought 65% of normal rain, the sixth below-average month of 2026 (Environment Agency, 2 October). The agency's chief executive, Philip Duffy, said that day: “The drought is far from over.” Its rule is that drought is only over when rivers, groundwater and reservoirs are all back to normal.

How much rain is needed has a figure. On 16 September the Environment Agency said “we need 120% of typical rainfall over the next seven months for all areas to be considered out of drought”; by 15 October it put it as 120% over the next six months for some areas to recover. In September it also set the odds, “roughly a one-in-four chance that around half of the country will still be in drought next spring”, and said that even on average rainfall East Anglia may still be in drought by April, with Devon and Cornwall in fragile recovery.

A wet November to January helps, but it works slowly where it is needed most, and it is not certain: the Met Office's 26 October outlook says “there remain risks to drought recovery” because of the chance of near-average or dry conditions. The UK Hydrological Outlook for October, from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology with the Environment Agency, the Met Office and the other agencies, says “low flows are likely to persist in the groundwater-fed catchments in the southeast of England as groundwater levels slowly rise but remain low”, and expects those flows to stay below normal for the next three months. The Environment Agency's south-east report records little recharge during September, and groundwater rises slowly, from rain that soaks down over months rather than one wet week.

The Environment Agency has also said, more than once, that drought and flood can arrive together. Philip Duffy put it this way on 20 August: “it is possible to have simultaneous drought and flood as heavy rain falls on compacted soils.” That is the next chapter.

Why does heavy rain on dry ground raise the flood risk?

Our soil reading comes from COSMOS-UK, the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology's network of soil-moisture stations: 8 of 38 sites across the UK are drier than normal for mid-October, and in England the count is 7 of 27. On the European Drought Observatory's combined drought indicator, 94% of the lowland Great Britain farmland points we read are at warning level or worse. The Environment Agency's own September report says that “at the end of September, soils were much drier than would be expected across most of England”, and in south-east England most hydrological units had their highest soil-moisture deficit on record for the end of September.

Dry ground does not drink; it sheds. The Environment Agency's drought guidance says that “sometimes water will flow rapidly over the surface of dry, hard and compacted soils which can cause flash flooding”, and adds: “That is what happened at the end of the 2010 to 2012 drought in south, central and east England”. That is surface-water flooding, and rivers rising fast as water runs off fields. Its Thames-area report for September says soils “will need to return to zero SMD before significant groundwater recharge can occur”: in plain terms, the first rain runs off, the next soaks in, and only later does any reach the aquifers.

The slowest flood comes last. On the chalk of southern England, groundwater flooding happens when the water table reaches the surface, and the British Geological Survey says it “tends to remain around for weeks or even months at a time, so causing greater damage to properties”; the floods of 2000/01 and 2014 were largely on chalk aquifers, and BGS estimates that 122,000 to 290,000 properties in England lie in areas at risk of it. After England's wettest October to March on record, in 2023/24, the Environment Agency reported groundwater flood alerts and warnings “across many parts of central southern England” in April 2024. The aquifers start this winter low, so that stage, if it comes at all, comes late.

The national flood numbers each use their own measure, so we list them rather than add them. In England the Environment Agency's 2024 assessment puts around 6.3 million properties in areas at risk from rivers, the sea or surface water: about 2.4 million from rivers and the sea and 4.6 million from surface water, with about 750,000 in both. SEPA says 400,000 properties in Scotland, one in eight, are at medium risk of flooding; Natural Resources Wales puts 275,000 properties in Wales at risk; and the Northern Ireland Audit Office says around 45,000 properties sit within river and coastal floodplains.

For England we also hold the Environment Agency's council figures for rivers and the sea. The councils with the most properties in the high-risk band (a 1-in-30 or greater chance of flooding in any year) are East Riding of Yorkshire, North Yorkshire and East Lindsey, then Cornwall, Somerset, Hull, Doncaster, Cumberland, Lewisham, and Westmorland and Furness. Check your address on our flood-risk page while it is dry, then sign up for warnings: in England, the Environment Agency's free alerts and Floodline (0345 988 1188) cover rivers, the sea and groundwater but not surface water; Natural Resources Wales likewise does not warn for surface water; SEPA's regional Flood Alerts in Scotland do include it. Northern Ireland's Flooding Incident Line is 0300 2000 100.

If your home is in a flood risk area, our flood protection and flood pumps comparisons cover the kit, and our guide to flood warnings explains what each warning asks you to do.

What does El Niño mean for UK farming and food prices?

Defra's provisional figures for England, published on 8 October, put the 2026 barley harvest at 3.7 million tonnes, down 11.5% and the smallest since 2012, with spring barley down 23.4%; oats fell 29.4% to 527,000 tonnes, also the smallest since 2012. Wheat held at 10.76 million tonnes (up 0.8%) and oilseed rape rose 43.5%, so the season was uneven rather than uniformly poor. Defra's reason is the summer, not the Pacific: “the hot weather and limited rainfall during the growing season hampered the 2026 cereal and oilseed harvest”, after good drilling conditions in autumn 2025. These are England-only and provisional; UK figures are due on 10 December, and our harvest tracker will carry them.

The El Niño risk to farming is the next harvest, and the record is clear about what a wet autumn and winter do. Defra reported that UK wheat production “decreased by 40%, from 16.2 million tonnes in 2019 to 9.7 million tonnes in 2020”, a fall “mainly driven by the wet weather during the winter planting”: the wheat area fell 24% to 1.4 million hectares, the smallest since the 1970s. After the wet winter of 2023/24, when UK rainfall was 129% of average and England's 149%, Defra reported that “harvested production of wheat was 20% lower in 2024 at 11.1 million tonnes” because “winter planting was severely hampered by wet weather and flooding”. In both years growers switched to spring barley.

Right now the problem is the opposite. The NFU said on 15 October that “hard soil conditions continue to challenge farmers” and that “drought conditions could persist well into next year or worsen”; the Environment Agency's report for 9 to 15 October warned that farmers may not refill storage reservoirs over winter, which “could affect water availability for the 2027 irrigation season”. Feed costs are up: Defra put feed wheat at £197.95 a tonne in August 2026, 17.9% higher than a year earlier, and the NFU reported in August that livestock and dairy farmers were already using winter feed because grass had stopped growing.

On the shop shelf the picture is calm. ONS food and non-alcoholic drink inflation was 1.3% in September 2026, unchanged from August and last lower in October 2021; October's figure is due on 18 November. Defra puts the UK's production-to-supply ratio, the share of the food it uses that it grows itself, at about 60% for 2025, and some of the rest comes from places El Niño touches: the UK depends entirely on imports for rice, largely from India and Pakistan, and Defra says it will always import rice, bananas, tea and cocoa. Defra also says that a lower ratio “does not equate to low food security”.

The record on world prices is mixed. The 2024 cocoa spike was, in the World Bank's words, “attributable largely to erratic rain patterns during the second half of 2023 in Côte d'Ivoire (linked to El Niño), as well as disease-related issues”; by September 2026 cocoa was $5.92 a kilo, 24% below its 2025 average. The European Central Bank's study of past El Niños found the effect on wheat prices “upward but insignificant” and on coffee and cocoa “around zero”, with rises “particularly pronounced for soybeans, corn and rice”. The FAO's world food price index for September was 5.8% above a year earlier and 15.1% below its March 2022 peak, and the Bank of England, which lists a strong El Niño as an upside risk to food prices, said in July that the risk “might not materialise”.

Will El Niño mean more storms and power cuts?

Nobody can say how many storms the winter will bring; the Met Office says its seasonal forecasts cannot say how many storms will occur. What we can do is measure the quiet, so that the first storm has something to be compared against. Across 19 calm days from 29 September to 17 October, the four electricity networks we have read from the start (UK Power Networks, Northern Powergrid, National Grid Electricity Distribution and SSEN) listed a median of 232 new unplanned power cuts a day, with a range of 112 to 360. That is the number of new cuts listed, not how long they lasted or how many homes were in each.

When the first named storm of the 2026/27 season arrives, its daily count will sit beside that baseline on our storm page, so the scale is visible rather than asserted. The names are already set: Austen, Boelo and Chloe are next, and our storm-names tracker and the Storm Austen page are ready for them. For comparison, the 2025/26 season had seven named storms and 2023/24 had twelve.

Past storms show the range. During Storm Ciarán in November 2023, Utility Week reported the Energy Networks Association's figure of more than 147,000 properties experiencing some form of power cut; SSEN alone restored 35,000 customers after Ciarán and almost 60,000 after Storm Henk in January 2024. The Environment Agency's report for the year to March 2024 says the winter's storms flooded more than 5,000 properties while defences protected nearly 250,000. Storm Desmond's 55,000 in Lancaster, above, is what a flooded substation looks like.

If your power goes off for long enough, the payment is automatic in Great Britain: Ofgem's guidance is that “you will automatically be paid by your local network operator if you do not have power for a certain number of hours”. For 2026/27, in normal weather a home gets £100 after 12 hours (after 24 hours, and capped at £400, when 5,000 or more properties are off) and £45 for each further 12 hours. In severe weather Ofgem's two storm categories apply, set by how many times the normal number of faults a network sees: category 1 pays £90 after 24 hours, category 2 £90 after 48 hours, then £45 for every further 6 hours, capped at £2,235. Two payments do have to be claimed: the £100 for four or more cuts of three hours or more in a year, and the payment for a planned cut made without the required notice. These are Ofgem's rules for Great Britain, and our compensation tracker follows how each cut qualifies.

To report a cut, call 105, which is free and puts you through to your network operator. If someone in your home would struggle in a long cut, the Priority Services Register is how your network knows; our guide explains who qualifies. The Government Office for Science said on 17 September that NESO expects a secure electricity supply for Great Britain through the winter; what El Niño changes is the odds of the weather that brings lines down, not the supply behind them. Our power-cuts tracker shows live cuts by area.