This coming El Nio could be a monster. Will it bring epic rain to California this winter?

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The likelihood of a potentially powerful El Niño taking shape in the Pacific Ocean is rising, heightening concerns that Southern California could be in for an extreme rainy season.There is now an 82% chance that El Niño is likely to emerge over the next few months, up from the 61% chance estimated a month ago.And there’s now a 96% chance that the climate pattern — characterized by warmer ocean waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific — will be in force this winter, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center said Thursday.

It remains to be seen how strong this iteration of El Niño could be.There’s up to a 37% chance that it will be “very strong” by the end of the year, up from a forecast of 25% issued last month.There’s also a 30% chance El Niño will be “strong,” a 22% chance it’ll be “moderate,” and a 9% chance it’ll be “weak,” forecasters said.

“The tropics are changing quickly, so we have increasing confidence that we will transition to El Niño within the next couple of months — and also a higher likelihood that this event may be a strong event by this coming fall,” Nathaniel Johnson, meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, said in an interview Thursday.Climate scientist Zachary Labe, of the nonprofit Climate Central, said that “clearly, an El Niño is coming our way.” “This is really indicating that we are headed for potentially a very rare and unusual El Niño event this year,” Labe, formerly of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, said during a briefing Thursday.

El Niño is one of the most powerful climate patterns on Earth, capable of reshaping global weather and affecting rainfall and drought, according to the World Meteorological Organization.It typically hits every two to seven years and lasts around nine to 12 mon...