William Sweet, an oceanographer at NOAA, told CBS that the coming season is "a double whammy" — decades of sea-level rise with coastal waters already near the brim, plus a strong El Nino — and the result is more frequent, deeper, and more widespread high-tide flooding on both the West and East Coasts. [1] The paper's May 19 brief on the El Nino watch as a household risk story named the frame; Sweet is the NOAA voice that names it.

The numbers behind the phrase: NOAA's Climate Prediction Center puts the probability of El Nino arriving by July at 82%, with continuation through February in the Northern Hemisphere. [1] ENSO is currently in neutral, after exiting La Nina earlier this year. The 2015-16 and 2023-24 El Ninos both produced upticks in high-tide flooding compared with prior years — the operational evidence Sweet leans on.

The geography matters. During El Nino, the US West Coast typically sees higher tides and stronger surf; the Atlantic coast sees more storm surge; the southeastern and Gulf coasts get the excess rain. [1] None of that requires a named storm to arrive. The flooding is the climate-and-tide stack on its own.

NOAA's coastal inundation dashboard is the household instrument — water levels, forecasts, and monthly flooding outlooks updated continuously. [1] What the dashboard does not do is wait for hurricane season. It already reads.

Thursday's NOAA Atlantic hurricane outlook print will sit on top of this floor, not next to it. The reader who installs a tide-flood routine before the headline outlook drops gets the season's denominator first.

-- DARA OSEI, London