El Niño, 2026
NOAA has the Pacific in an Advisory and still strengthening. The one operational print so far is a Canal drought — fewer slots, a held draft, and no listed stock that is the Canal.
On September 10 the Climate Prediction Center kept the alert on: El Niño Advisory, further strengthening, more than 90 percent odds of a very strong event through the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter. August Niño-3.4 sat at +1.8°C. The eastern equatorial Pacific ran more than three degrees hot. The chance that October–December prints a historic three-month reading — RONI of +2.5°C or more — moved from 69 percent in mid-August to 75 percent. Impacts, the same discussion says, are not guaranteed. The next official note is October 8.
That is the weather. The thing you can already count is a lock.
Nine ships a day
The Panama Canal Authority named El Niño in Advisory A-29-2026, dated August 20. May through August rainfall in the Canal watershed ran 34 percent below the historical average. Inflows ran 44 percent below. The answer was slots: Neopanamax daily transits down to nine; Panamax to twenty-five, then twenty-three. On September 4, Advisory A-33 held Neopanamax draft at 14.63 meters and postponed a further cut to 14.48. The restriction is real. It is not a one-way march.
Canal watershed, May–August 2026
ACP Advisory A-29-2026, as filed on the stock-market wiki. Hydrological-year rainfall and watershed inflows versus the historical average.
A mid-September Authority fetch held the same numbers. No A-34 or later. Slots still nine and twenty-three. Draft still 14.63 meters “until further notice.” The 14.48-meter cut was not reinstated. Official Gatun sat at 84.5 feet on September 19. No October–December slot or draft schedule was pulled. Auction series stayed login-gated. Further cuts, or a recovery if the rains catch Gatun up, remain open. The wiki leaves that gap honest.
There is no US-listed Canal stock. Canadian Pacific Kansas City sold the Panama Canal Railway on April 1, 2025. Filing a ticker as the Canal trade is inventing one. Water-treatment names are a different, still-unwired hypothesis — not this lock.
A monsoon that is not yet a failure
India’s weather office put September countrywide rainfall most likely below normal — under 91 percent of the long-period average. Season-to-date through September 9 was 648 millimeters against a normal 760.6, about 15 percent short. Through late August the same season was 13 percent short and still inside the Normal band. Fifteen percent does not, by itself, reclassify the year as deficient. Do not call 2026 a failed monsoon. September’s monthly outlook is the print that is still open.
Indonesia’s weather office, on September 7, kept September critical for forest and land fires and said El Niño persists into early 2027. That is dryness color on the parent event. It is not a US palm ticker.
11 million extra terawatt hours of energy is currently stored up. That’s 500 years worth of human energy in this ocean. And over the next few months, that energy is going to be released into the atmosphere.
David Friedberg, All-In, May 2026
Friedberg’s May Science Corner is how the wiki first took the year seriously — 99 percent confidence, an 1877 analog, India as a calorie-deficit risk stacked on a Hormuz fertilizer shock. The official house later refined the confidence (NOAA was 82 to 96 percent in May, not 99) and then replaced the vintage. August’s advisory does not republish the May “super / ≥3°C / one-in-three” line. Neither does the World Meteorological Organization’s mid-year update. Keep the podcast as the opening argument. Do not file it as the September map.
Three questions that stay questions
A late-August CPC long-lead discussion — Scott Handel, text only; the maps were not fetched — tilts the southern storm track wet. Southeast above-normal precipitation odds over 60 percent from November through March. Coastal California and southern Arizona over 50 percent from December through April, peaking in January–March, with 1998 and 2024 named as analogs. That is a flood-claims question for property writers. No listed insurer or reinsurer has been retrieved naming El Niño or this winter’s catastrophe load. The none-found stands. No ticker.
The same discussion tilts the northern tier warm — Pacific Northwest to the Northeast above-normal temperatures over 50 percent by December–February. That would be a heating-degree-day story if a utility or a gas print named it. None has. CPC’s own degree-day file in the wiki is dated July 16, not reissued with the Advisory. EIA’s first-quarter 2027 heating table closed August 6, before both August CPC notes, and shows a modest shortfall versus the ten-year. It does not say El Niño.
Softs are later than the May cascade implied. USDA’s June Brazil coffee annual is a bumper 2026/27 crop, with El Niño caution into end-harvest and 2027/28 flowering — not a cut this season. Indonesia cane and palm already name a strong or continuing event; palm in one August update moves from 48 to 47.2 million metric tons, with the B50 mandate kept as a separate shock. No US-listed softs last step is wired.
Two index arguments sit next to each other and should stay split. CPC’s July Niño-3.4 was +1.4°C. Columbia’s IRI July TONI was +2.03°C. Official probabilities verify on CPC’s RONI. A June crop-monitor analogue for 1997 and 2015 put India maize and rice about zero to 3 percent below trend — not a 35 percent monsoon-failure story. That analogue is stale on intensity. Leave it as history.