Worldwide strengthening El Nino giveth and taketh away

In California, they're counting on it to end an historic drought; in Peru, they've already declared a pre-emptive emergency to prepare for devastating flooding. It's both an economic stimulus and recession-maker.
And it's likely to increase the price of coffee, chocolate and sugar.
It's El Nino - most likely, the largest in well over a decade, forecasters say. A lot more than mere weather, it affects lives and pocketbooks in different ways in different places.
Every few years, the winds shift and the water in the Pacific Ocean gets warmer than usual. That water sloshes back and forth around the equator in the Pacific, interacts with the winds above and then changes weather worldwide. This is El Nino.

Droughts are triggered in places like Australia and India, but elsewhere, droughts are quenched and floods replace them. The Pacific gets more hurricanes; the Atlantic fewer. Winter gets milder and wetter in much of the United States.
The world warms, goosing Earth's already rising thermometer from man-made climate change.

Peruvian sailors named the formation El Nino - the (Christ) Child - because it was most noticeable around Christmas.
An El Nino means the Pacific Ocean off Peru's coast is warm, especially a huge patch 100 metres below the surface, and as it gets warmer and close to the surface, the weather "is just going to be a river falling from the sky," said biophysicist Michael Ferrari, director of climate services for agriculture at the Colorado firm aWhere Inc.

Around the world, crops fail in some places, thrive elsewhere. Commercial fishing shifts. More people die of flooding, fewer from freezing. Americans spend less on winter heating. The global economy shifts.
"El Nino is not the end of the world so you don't have to hide under the bed. The reality is that in the US an El Nino can be a good thing," said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center.
This El Nino officially started in March and keeps getting stronger. If current trends continue, it should officially be termed a strong El Nino early in August, peak sometime near the end of year and peter out sometime next spring.

Meteorologists say it looks like the biggest such event since the fierce El Nino of 1997-1998.
California mudslides notwithstanding, the US economy benefited by nearly USD 22 billion from that El Nino, according to a 1999 study.
That study found that 189 people were killed in the US, mainly from tornadoes linked to El Nino, but an estimated 850 lives were saved due to a milder winter.
Economic winners include the US, China, Mexico and Europe while India, Australia and Peru are among El Nino's biggest losers.