A "Super El Niño" Is Coming — and Wall Street Is Already Betting on Your Grocery Bill

Something is happening in the Pacific Ocean right now that could show up in your grocery cart by Christmas — and keep showing up well into 2027.

Water temperatures along the equator have climbed well past the threshold that defines an El Niño — and they're still rising. Climate forecasters at Columbia's IRI, working with NOAA data, now put the probability that El Niño persists through the fall at essentially 100%. More striking: over half of the two dozen forecast models they track predict it will strengthen into what analysts are calling a "Super El Niño" — a top-tier event of the kind seen only a handful of times in the last 75 years.

Wall Street isn't waiting for the weather. Bank of America strategists have already mapped out which crops get hit — and their projections include words like "collapse."

This article is for information and education only and is not financial advice. Projections cited are forecasts by third parties and may not materialize.

The forecast, in one scoreboard

• Pacific temperatures: +1.7°C above normal and rising — well past the El Niño threshold
• Odds El Niño lasts through fall: ~100% (IRI/NOAA)
• Models predicting a "very strong" event: 13 of 24; NOAA pegs the probability at 63%
• Events this strong in the past 75 years: about 6 out of 20
• Expected peak: fall 2026 — mid-planting-season in South America
• When food prices feel it: 6–12 months after the peak, historically

That last line matters most for your wallet — more on it below.

What is a "Super El Niño," in plain English?

El Niño is a recurring climate pattern where unusually warm water spreads across the central and eastern Pacific. That warm water shifts rainfall around the globe: some regions flood, others dry out, and harvests on multiple continents get disrupted at the same time.

Most El Niños are mild. But of the 20 events recorded in the past 75 years, only about six have reached the intensity forecasters expect this time, according to Bank of America. The event is projected to peak in the fall — right in the middle of South America's planting season.

The crops in the crosshairs

Here's what bank analysts project if the forecasts hold, per BofA and JPMorgan estimates reported by Yahoo Finance:

• Coffee: down 5–15%. Drought in Vietnam and Indonesia — two of the world's biggest producers — could cut output sharply.
• Sugar: down ~5% globally. JPMorgan calls it the single most El Niño-exposed commodity. Brazil faces a 5% loss; India and Thailand up to 10%.
• Australian wheat: down 20–60%. Australian wheat output has fallen in almost every past El Niño; this range depends on how extreme the drought gets.
• Brazilian corn: down ~10% — at the same time U.S. corn supplies have already tightened. BofA's warning on grains overall: supplies "could collapse."

What happened the last few times

Forecasts are guesses; history is data. The record of strong El Niños is not reassuring for food prices.

During the most recent major event, in 2023–24, cocoa prices rallied roughly 250% as West African harvests failed, sugar reached its highest price in over a decade, and the disruption echoed for years — coffee was still setting record highs in 2025. The 2015–16 super El Niño slashed Vietnam's coffee output and fueled a sharp rally in robusta coffee futures — the same Vietnam-drought scenario analysts are projecting now. And both 1997–98 and 2015–16 triggered steep production drops in Ivory Coast cocoa, the backbone of the world's chocolate supply.

Notice the pattern in the timing, too: the price surges arrived with a lag, historically six to twelve months after the event's peak. Commodity traders move on the forecast; your supermarket moves on the harvest. If this El Niño peaks in fall 2026 on schedule, the checkout-line effect lands across 2027.