California will be taking the brunt of El Niño which is just around the corner now that summer is nearly done. This means the Pacific Ocean is starting to warm up which causes the brutal and deadly phenomenon. El Niño is described in realtor.com as the "dangerous and sometimes disastrous series of weather events that heats up the atmosphere and changes circulation patterns around the globe, especially the jet stream over the Pacific, which becomes stronger and dumps more frequent and intense storms over the western U.S."
The effects of El Niño are not limited to the US but can be felt worldwide as well. It will be pretty bad in the South, particularly in California. This is worrying real estate firms as to whether the market can take the impact of the massive weather disturbance. In July, it was recorded that eleven of the top twenty real estate markets were all in California and prices are at all-time highs.
To have an idea of what this phenomenon can do, nyctimes.com reported that this year's El Niño weather pattern could be the most powerful on record, federal forecasters said, while warning that the effects of the weather system are never certain. "We're predicting this El Niño could be among the strongest El Niños in the historical record," said Mike Halpert, the deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Despite this gloomy forecast, experts believe the effect on the market won't be so severe. An economist for realtor.com, Jonathan Smoke said that "abnormal and severe weather can impact real estate in several ways, but mostly the impact would be on the timing of sales and closing but not overall demand." No matter what effects El Niño will have on California's real estate market, there is already reason for people to get worried of the coming storms.
