Power Of El Niño Stretches All The Way To Maryland

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- It's a major weather changer, and NASA has been tracking it for months. El Niño is the strongest it's been in nearly a decade.

Alex DeMetrick reports its power stretches all the way to Maryland.

NASA has turned all its weather tools on El Niño, a huge pool of warm water in the Pacific.

"This year is the strongest since in '97, '98. And not only at the surface, but also below the surface it's particularly warm," said Dr. George Huffman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

That warm water warms the atmosphere, changing the bend of the jet stream.

In the west, it's called opening the storm door--triggering mudslides, flooding and property damage in some places.

"They said run, and we ran, and the water just came over like a surge," one woman said.

But from the International Space Station, a welcome sight--the return of mountain snow packs the west depends on for water.

"There's a good chance we're going to see more snow this week than we did all last season," one man said.

But at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, researchers still see a dark cloud with the silver lining.

"The short term drought, and even in southern California, has largely been eased, but the long term drought continues to be a serious problem," Dr. Huffman said.

For Maryland, El Niño has kept hurricanes off the East Coast. It also helped provide the moisture to produce last month's record snow.

NASA will continue tracking El Niño's heat, which is expected to subside after spring--but not before the possibility of more storms.

As El Niño weakens, scientists say it will either be replaced by cooler than normal water, known as La Niña, or enter a neutral phase.