What will super El Niño mean for Puget Sound’s already warming waters?

The years 2025 and 2026 saw warmer-than-usual temperatures across Western Washington, from Olympia to Bellingham. It’s not just here. NOAA recently reported that 2026 was the warmest summer on record for the contiguous United States.

And not just in the air. Puget Sound’s waters are warming as well.

Jan Newton is executive director of the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS), an agency that tracks ocean data in the Pacific Northwest. Newton told The News Tribune on Tuesday that water temperatures have been warmer than average in Puget Sound for a couple of years now. There are a number of reasons for it.

An incoming Super El Niño stands to warm things even more.

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NANOOS has been tracking the Super El Niño anomalies, which you can see on its website. Newton says a massive Kelvin wave is making its way north and is currently off the coast of California. A Kelvin wave, unlike a regular swell or local wave, occurs beneath the surface and can stretch for thousands of miles, raising the level and temperature of the water.

“It’s not here yet, but it will be,” she said.

Recent warming trends can’t be blamed on a Super El Niño, but upcoming fall and winter temperatures possibly could be.

“The fall will be warmer than average,” Newton says. “So high temperatures will persist because our weather is getting the signal from the ocean.” Deputy state climatologist Karin Bumbaco agrees.

“This winter, we are expecting to see warmer-than-normal air temperatures, and that’s across all of Washington state,” Bumbaco told The News Tribune over the phone on Thursday. “That tends to influence the water. Right now, our seasonal forecast models are predicting strongly above-normal temperatures. From October through December, and then again January through March.”

How much rain and snow we could get is less certain.

“We usually expect to see drier than normal precipitation during El Niño years,” Bumbaco says. “This year is slightly different because of how strong this El Niño is. There’s a little bit more uncertainty in what precipitation will be over the following winter.”