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Thursday, March 12, 2026

A dramatic, record-setting El Niño may be brewing, forecasters say

Ulius Cesarius March 12, 2026

Get ready. The world's most influential natural weather feature is coming in for a landing.

"The El Niño cometh," saidclimate scientist Zeke Hausfather on X recently.

An El Niño is forecast to develop later in 2026 along the equator in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and some signs show it will be a strong one, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center said on March 12.

The developing El Niño may impact the number of hurricanes we can expect in the 2026 hurricane season, which officially begins on June 1.

It may also bring strong heat waves, droughts and flooding around the world.

In addition, El Niño often leads to some of the hottest years on record, such as the record-breaking worldwide average temperature in 2024.

If El Niño develops as expected, it "would push up our estimate for 2026 global temperatures (though it's still unlikely to surpass 2024 as the warmest year), and make 2027 very likely to be the warmest year on record." Hausfather said on X.

What's the forecast?

The current La Niña climate pattern is fading to eventually be replaced by a strong El Niño pattern, according to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.

The likelihood of an El Niño forming in the late summer is currently estimated by the CPC at 62%. It's expected to "persist through at least the end of 2026," the prediction center said in the March 12 report, which officially declared an "El Niño watch."

"Even though model forecasts are relatively less accurate this time of year, the increasing odds of El Niño are supported by the large amount of heat in the subsurface ocean and the expected weakening of the low-level trade winds," the report said.

"If El Niño forms, the potential strength remains very uncertain, with a 1-in-3 chance that it would be 'strong' during October-December 2026," the prediction center said in the report.

The strong El Niño in the Pacific Ocean in 2016 is shown in this satellite image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service.

What is El Niño?

El Niño is a natural climate pattern in which surface sea water temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean are warmer than average.

Its name means the Little Boy, or Christ Child in Spanish. El Niño was originally recognized by fishermen off the coast of South America in the 1600s with the appearance of unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean around Christmas.

The entire natural climate cycle is officially known as El Niño – Southern Oscillation, called ENSO by scientists. The cycle swings between warmer and cooler seawater in a region along the equator in the tropical Pacific. La Niña is marked by cooler-than-average ocean water in the region.

Could it be a 'Super' El Niño? Or a 'Godzilla' El Niño?

Although they're not official terms, some excited scientists and headline writers have dubbed the potentially strong El Niño a"Super"or"Godzilla"El Niño.

Experts at the Climate Prediction Center do not use these terms. As noted above, government scientists say there's a one-in-three chance of the El Niño reaching strong levels.

One other expert, though, said a strong one could be on the way: "Whew,"said climate scientist Daniel Swain recently in an X postafter reviewing the latest model data. "All signs are increasingly pointing to a significant, if not strong to very strong, El Niño event."

Why do we care about El Niño?

The ENSO cycle is the primary factor government scientists consider when announcing their winter weather forecast because it mainly influences our weather in the colder months. El Niño doesn't have a strong summer climate impact for most of the country,NOAA said.

During an El Niño winter, the southern third of the United States typically experiences wetter-than-average conditions, while the northern third sees enhanced chances of below-normal precipitation, according to the Climate Prediction Center.

As for temperatures, "El Niño winters are typically warmer across the continental U.S., especially from the Pacific Northwest to the Great Lakes," Matthew Rosencrans, NOAA's lead hurricane seasonal forecaster, said in an e-mail to USA TODAY. "The warmth can extend farther down the West Coast and into the Southeast, but those signals are much less certain."

Typical influence of El Niño on Pacific and Atlantic seasonal hurricane activity.

How does El Niño influence hurricanes?

El Niño can have a huge impact on the severity of the hurricane season in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

"Typically, El Niño leads to more rising air over the tropical Pacific, which then leads to stronger upper-level wind shear and sinking air across the tropical Atlantic," said associate scientistAndy Hazelton of the University of Miamiin an email to USA TODAY. "This usually reduces the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic, especially in the Caribbean and Gulf."

However, he said we've seen El Niño years where the Atlantic was very warm, and that offset some of the El Niño effects − such as during 2023, he added.

Conversely, "El Niño years are typically associated with more activity in the eastern Pacific," said Rosencrans.

Doyle Rice is a national correspondent for USA TODAY, with a focus on weather and climate.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:NOAA forecasters say strong El Niño may be brewing

‘Sinners’ Should Win Best Picture. It’s Not Even Close.

Ulius Cesarius March 12, 2026

And then there were two—frontrunners.

behindthescenes of a film set featuring actors and a camera crew

Ryan Coogler'sSinnersis themost nominated(16) film in Oscar history.Paul Thomas Anderson'sOne Battle After Another, such are the Oscars-so-white ways of Hollywood, is still touted as the favorite for Best Picture.

Nonetheless,Sinnersshould win the Oscar for Best Picture. And the race shouldn't even be close.

Apologies for the ample spoilers ahead.

OBAA, a dark comedy and action thriller set in a fictional California town, begins with a focus on Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a member of a revolutionary group called the French 75, and his partner Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), a Black woman. It opens with the group raiding an immigration detention center. In the process, Perfidia, who's characterized as domineering and insatiable in her sexual appetite, humiliates Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn), strife that sets off Lockjaw's psychosexual obsession with her, desire replete with a tryst. Perfidia becomes pregnant, and Bob trades the life of a leftist revolutionary for fatherhood. In the film's long prologue, Perfidia abandons her new family, is caught, snitches on her comrades, and gets ghost.

The second half of the film picks up when their daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), is a teenager. Lockjaw, who's been offered the chance to join a cabal of powerful Christian nationalists, starts hunting Willa to test his paternity of her and the attendant risks to his dreams of leveled-up white supremacy.

two men in period clothing standing beside a vintage car

Before the PTA acolytes blaspheme me a hater: Kudos for directing the performances of Deandre (Regina Hall), who along with Willa, are Black characters distant from satire. Kudos for Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), who's a calming force on the film and funny without straining for laughs. Kudos to Penn for disappearing into the role of the racist officer, one conflicted with unforgettable idiosyncrasies. Kudos to the pulse-gunning action of the film's last third. Kudos to Anderson for dramatizing a secret society of prominent white men who echo the Epstein files.

Critics have hailedOBAAas a "deeply humanist story of rebellion." Proclaim "there is nothing trivial in [PTA's] portrait of shattered lives and relationships and of an American society shaken to its core." But I found those claims to be untrue. The film is undeserving of the Oscar for Best Picture, most of all because its portrayal of Black people is somewhere between insidiously problematic and flagrantly anti-Black.

The most glaring example is Perfidia (this ain't me knocking Taylor or her prodigious talent but a critique of the role), who's sexualized to the point that I wondered whether she should be read as satirical. While Black women, too, contain multitudes, her hypersexuality seems grounded in the stereotype of a promiscuous Black woman (never to be divorced from the virtuous white woman) and appears aimed at titillation rather than some other essential story function. Perfidia is also presented as a woman who's at least a second-generation revolutionary, and aren't revolutionaries people of principle? It was tough for me to buy that a legacy revolutionary would snitch with the quickness on her coconspirators, if at all. The "no snitching" dictum in Black culture is rooted in a legitimate mistrust of the justice system. That Perfidia and others in the group go from radicals to state informants in the time it takes a grenade to blow maligns the integrity of Black resistance.

Perfidia also abandons her infant—"You realize I put myself first, right?" she tells Bob on her way out—a decision I judged against the extensive discourse on a so-called crisis of broken Black families. Plus, Perfidia is the only member of the group who murders someone during their missions. And whom does she kill? A Black security guard.

The lone Black male member of the French 75 is Laredo (Wood Harris). Laredo has almost no lines, but Anderson saw fit to depict a moment in which he kisses Mae (Alana Haim) and says, "Regular working white girl. Now do your thing," before sending her off to a bank job. A cringe line that seems meant to reify the trite trope of Black men objectifying and coveting white women.

The problematic portrayal of Blackness extends to Junglepussy (Shayna McHayle), who jumps on a bank teller's counter during that same lethal mission and declares her code name. While McHayle uses Junglepussy as her rap moniker, it's telling that Anderson chose not only to keep the name for her character but to have her trumpet it—and that her moniker is the lone one borrowed from real life. Not to mention that Bob, the man in an interracial relationship with a Black woman, is christened "Ghetto Pat," which is a hella curious handle, ain't it, given the long history of Black people being maligned as "ghetto"?

Deep into the action of the film, Sergio quips to Bob, "I've got a little Latino Harriet Tubman thing going on." What was the point of having Sergio, a Mexican man, turn one of Black history's most iconic figures into a punchline, when he could've mentioned someone like Manuel Luis del Fierro, the Mexican who protected an absconding slave from kidnappers in 1850?

OBAAportends itself a film about a government that has devolved into an authoritarian regime and its relentless persecution of immigrants, about humanity and the measures the people employ to fight oppression. But it's hollow on those subjects. Beyond showing Bob half-watchingThe Battle of Algiersat home, Anderson shortchanges the history of revolutionary social movements. Politics are treated with a flippancy that undermines the import of radical action and the people who dare it—the pure antithesis of the message we need now. How could it do anything but fall short of satirizing a regime that has proved near boundless in its violence and corruption and blatant bigotries, that treats contrition as anathema. And if satire ain't its aim, I can abide even less its antagonism toward my people, not to mention how it trivializes resistance. Plus, the film recapitulates Hollywood's familiar message: The battle for the fate of America, often synonymous with the fate of the world, is at base a battle between white men, struggles that evermore foreordain a great white savior.

Sinners, the genre-bending horror thriller set in Jim Crow–era Mississippi, centers Blackness. It begins with Sammie (Miles Caton), a young blues-loving sharecropper from Mississippi being recruited by his twin cousins Smoke and Stack (both Michael B. Jordan) to play their brand-new juke joint. On the juke joint's first night, white vampires surround it and prey on the patrons, setting off a battle for lives and souls.

Before anybody gets to accusing me of overt bias: Critics contend thatSinners's "moments of tragedy and violence are never dwelled upon properly." Argue it's a "messy picture that throws the kitchen sink at the genre, and yet, somehow, often misses." But I view the film as a triumph for its deliberative treatment of violence. For how it coheres into a story that explores African folklore and the healing power of culture; Black freedom and self-determination; love of family and community; with how it models resisting injustice.

WhileOBAApostures at it,Sinnersis radical in that there are no white saviors, in that Black people are not the stock sidekicks of courageous white people but heroes at the heart of the film. In fact most of its white characters, including all who first surround the juke joint to prey on its patrons, are depicted as hostile to the Black community (as well as the Asian characters and the mixed woman who are its denizens). Like the character of Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who, though she professes to love Stack, enters a veritable sanctuary for Black folks against warnings. Mary becomes the vampires' first victim, which is also to say their first coconspirator. Like the husband of married vampires who's a Klan member before he's bitten. Like the Klansman who sold the twins the barn that became their juke joint and returns the next day to slaughter all present. And yet, somehow,Sinnersis so soulful that the lead vampire, Remmick (Jack O'Connell), is imbued with more humanity than most of the Black characters inOBAA.

This article appeared in the April/May 2026 issue of Esquiresubscribe

Then there's the fact thatSinnersis just all-around extraordinary movie-making. There's the originality of Coogler's Oscar-nominated screenplay. There's Ludwig Göransson's superb Oscar-nominated score. There's the sublime one-shot scene in which Sammie's singing conjures a journey (in which African times past, present, and future exist all at once) that not only sets the stakes for the main characters but, as Coogler has explained, features "ancestor spirits from both the past and the future" of Black music: African drummers, an electric guitarist, a hip-hop DJ and dancer, even Chinese opera dancers. There's the indelible Oscar-nominated performance of Michael B. Jordan, a man who became two humans, each intimately connected and miraculously distinct.

Damn the naysayers, there is only one—worthiest.

Coogler'sBlack Panther, which was also nominated for Best Picture, became not just a blockbuster but a cultural touchstone. This time, without the help of a superhero franchise, one of Hollywood's finest auteurs has done it again: delivered a transcendent work of art that is at once ingenious, an astute story about America, and a paean to his people. Which is why, come Oscar Sunday, when an A-lister announces the last award, iswearfogod, there better be a whole lot of ecstatic Black folks bounding onto that stage.

Mickey Rourke must leave LA home after default eviction ruling

Ulius Cesarius March 12, 2026

Mickey Rourkeis facing eviction.

The "Wrestler" actor, 73, defaulted on his California eviction case, with a Los Angeles County clerk ruling that the actor must move out of his home due tounpaid rent, according to a March 9 filing obtained by USA TODAY.Peoplemagazine was first to report the news.

Mickey Rourke poses before the Billionaire fall/winter 19/20 collection by Philipp Plein during New York Fashion Week on Feb. 11, 2019, in New York City.

A default judgment is made when either party in a case fails to take action, either by not responding to a summons or by failing to appear in court. USA TODAY has reached out to Rourke's reps for comment.

A complaint filed in California in December accused the "Iron Man 2" star of owing $59,100 in unpaid rent at his Los Angeles residence, racked up over the course of the year. He was told to pay the rent he owes or move out within three days, the complaint said.

Stars are stepping out at the final awards events of the season as the 2026 Oscar race enters its final stretch. The star-studded Actor Awards kicked off the month of March, which will also feature the debut of movies like "The Bride!" and "Project Hail Mary," not to mention the Academy Awards on March 15.

Scroll through for the best celebrity photos of the month so far, starting with Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell at the New York premiere of "The Madison" on March 9, 2026.