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... For months, scientists have cautioned that the natural climate pattern could grow into a record-breaking beast, releasing extraordinary amounts of heat from the ocean and fueling droughts, floods, heat waves and severe storms. Now, a traditional strength measurement of El Niño, called the Oceanic Niño Index, indicates that the pattern has reached an intensity unseen in recorded history.

On September 21, the daily sea surface temperature in the region where El Niño develops -- the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean -- reached 3.08 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1991 to 2020 average. That's more extreme than any other El Niño ever recorded.

"It has been a remarkable event," says Nathaniel Johnson, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J. What's more, the El Niño will probably grow even stronger, Johnson says. "We're probably going to reach our peak within the next few months." ...