New York City is in line for a warmer, wetter winter with well below-average snowfall in the 2026-27 season, as a strengthening El Niño that forecasters say could become the strongest on record reshapes storm tracks across the United States.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center said El Niño strengthened further over the past month, with sea surface temperatures exceeding 3 degrees Celsius above normal in the eastern equatorial Pacific. The center put the chance of a very strong event during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter at greater than 90 percent, and said there is a 75 percent chance of a historic event between October and December that would exceed the strength of any El Niño on record since 1950.

“This has the potential to be the strongest El Niño on record,” AccuWeather Long-Range Expert Paul Pastelok said in the company’s 2026-27 winter forecast, calling it almost certain to surpass the powerful El Niño events of 1982-83 and 1997-98. El Niño strengthens the southern storm track and typically brings warmer-than-average conditions and fewer intrusions of Arctic air to the northern tier of the country, AccuWeather said.