While bringing the rest of California relief from its extended period of drought, El Nino is causing serious damage to the city of Pacifica.
As seen in the video above, many houses are on the verge of falling into the sea. The steady erosion of Pacifica's coastline is being accelerated by El Nino, thanks to its heavy storms and high tides.
Three apartment complexes on the shoreline that are still occupied have been declared uninhabitable and will require demolishing.
Pacifica’s city manager has declared a state of emergency in the coastal city.
Resident Lawrence Spies told Al Jazeera that although the coastline had already experienced significant erosion, its pace had suddenly quickened.
“Since this new storm system that everybody’s named El Nino, it has gone at a very rapid pace, faster than ever before,” said Mr Spies.
“We used to have 140 feet beyond the end of the building and that was in 1975 when we moved in here and now we got 15 feet left.”
He also explained that the extended drought is the cause of the current problems.
“It’s so dried up that these rains are just saturating it and then the high tide comes in and washes the bottom portion of it out and it just fall down on top of itself.
El Nino occurs every two to seven years along the Pacific coast. Usually, equatorial currents and trade winds move warm waters westwards, however, with El Nino, currents across the Pacific switch, sending warm waters eastwards. This drags precipitation eastwards too, resulting in droughts in some countries and heavy rains in others.
