California drought: Odds of an El Niño rising

Chances of an El Niño bringing a badly needed wet winter to California have gone up, the National Weather Service said Thursday.

According to scientists, there’s a better than 90 percent chance the weather pattern often associated with plentiful rain will hit in the fall, and an 85 percent chance it will hang around through the end of the year.

Those predictions are up from May, when scientists said an El Niño — which involves the warming of tropical waters in the Pacific — had an 80 percent chance of sticking around into the winter.

Californians had high hopes last year that a strong El Niño would bring rain to break the drought, but early predictions didn’t hold.

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