El Niño could bring wet weather to Calif.
By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times
U.S. government forecasters say odds are increasing that El Niño, an ocean-warming pattern that alters weather across the globe, will develop later this year.
Conditions in the eastern tropical Pacific have shifted enough that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday activated its alert system to issue an official El Niño watch.
The alert means that meteorologists now believe El Niño, a natural cycle that occurs every two to seven years, has a more than a 50 percent chance of forming by the summer or fall.