Past strong El Niño events are associated with extensive coastal damage during storms. When storms coincide with high sea levels the damage can be amplified. Please visit our daily sea level anomalies page to see predicted and observed sea level heights at key locations along the California coast.

Precipitation is a primary component of El Niño events for San Diego and other regions of the west. This page provides daily updates on the water year-to-date accumulation for San Diego county, California and a collection of stations known as the "8-Station Index". The information on this page allows you to quickly see how current conditions relate to other years and other strong El Niño years. For example, On November 25, 2015, San Diego County was at 8.6% of the water year total which is slightly below the mean of 11.7% for this day. All of California is at 10.8%; lower than the mean of 15.8%. The 8-Station Index is at 9.4%; lower than the mean of 16.8%. For a graphic showing the location of the 8-Stations please click here.

Snow accumulation is critical to California's water supply. The image below (click to view larger image) shows the percent of April 1st snow water equivalent for 4 regions: Northern Sierra, Central Sierra, Southern Sierra and Upper Colorado River Basin. Recent dry winters (2013-14 and 2014-15), a wet winter (1997-98) and the current winter (2015-16) are shown. More details and data files can be found here.