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Aerial view of large waves crashing against beachfront homes in Long Beach, California, October 2026

California’s El Niño Winter: Coastal Flooding, Debris Flows, and What to Do

The ocean is already running a foot above the tide tables, three hurricanes’ worth of surf has torn up the Southern California coast, and NOAA now favors a wet winter from San Diego to the Oregon line. How to prepare for El Niño in California: king tide dates, atmospheric rivers, burn scar debris flows, and what to do this week, this month, and this fall.

A collapsed cabin lies in ruins amid mud, boulders, and debris after flooding swept through a wooded area

USGS Updates Burn Scar Flood Model

A quarter inch of rain in fifteen minutes can turn a freshly burned slope into a river of mud and boulders. The warning system has long leaned on a model built from Southern California canyons, then applied to the entire West. A new USGS update refits it for three regions and beats the old version by roughly 15 to 60 percent, with fewer false alarms. A strong El Niño is on the way, so read this before the next storm.