Before September 2025, the US National Weather Service had never issued a September coastal flood advisory for the San Francisco Bay Area. It issued two in one month. Scientists and emergency managers are treating this as the opening signal of what could be a historically destructive winter, driven by an El Niño that forecasters say has a greater than 90% chance of being "very strong" and roughly 75% chance of being historic, according to NOAA's latest forecast. The climate pattern is expected to layer an additional foot of sea level rise onto California's coast — on top of the 8 to 12 inches of rise already caused by the climate crisis over the past century, according to state climatologist Michael Anderson. That compound effect threatens simultaneous hazards: supercharged storms, explosive surf, landslides in recent wildfire burn scars including Big Sur and the 2025 Los Angeles firestorm zones, and debris flows on hillsides officials say need five years to heal. Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on September 21 to mobilize preparations. Hawaii has already taken direct hits — deluges, landslides, toppled trees, and flooded buildings. Southern California coastline has been hammered by massive waves that damaged homes and devoured beaches. Long Beach is lining its seawall with large sandbags where surf has already burst through. Orange County is pushing roughly 690,000 cubic yards of sand along its coastline. San Diego workers are going door to door in flood zones helping small businesses fortify. Los Angeles County's flood control systems are designed to withstand a so-called 100-year event — a 1% annual probability that El Niño could push higher. Meanwhile, LA's emergency management director Kevin McGowan is simultaneously managing lingering fire risks into November. "People should continue to prepare not just for one hazard — but all hazards," he said ahead of a scorching October weekend that smashed several temperature records across Southern California. The federal backstop is thinner than at any point in recent memory. Since the beginning of his second term, President Trump has imposed deep budget cuts and mass layoffs at FEMA and NOAA — the two agencies most critical to disaster forecasting and response. Monica Medina, who served as NOAA's principal deputy administrator during the Obama administration, said these agencies were already stretched by rising extreme weather frequency. "I worry about loss of life and about our inability to be protected at a time when you know we need our government the most," she said. The global stakes extend well beyond California. Tens of millions worldwide could face food insecurity, with global food prices pushed higher. Climate scientists project that by February, more than 450,000 people globally could die from temperature spikes linked to this El Niño, with additional deaths from floods, droughts, wildfires, and rain. The pattern is being called everything from "super" to "Godzilla" as Pacific Ocean conditions climb toward all-time records. What makes this moment structurally distinctive is the collision of two curves: rising climate risk and declining institutional capacity to manage it. California's local preparations — sandbags, sand replenishment, door-to-door outreach — are genuine but fundamentally insufficient for compound disasters that cross jurisdictional lines. The federal agencies designed to coordinate national-scale responses have been deliberately weakened at the precise moment the weather system most likely to test them is gathering force.
