Scientists at CONICET Mendoza and the Argentine Institute of Nivology, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences (IANIGLA) have built a tool that tracks hydrological and meteorological conditions in Mendoza province in real time, according to Clarin.com. The province is described by the outlet as one of the areas most exposed to the effects of the Súper Niño weather pattern.
The platform, called the Portal Hidroclimático, goes beyond monitoring snowfall. According to Clarin.com, it was designed to anticipate scenarios that could affect Mendoza, including flood and drought alerts, along with simulations intended to support harvest planning and the management of reservoirs.
Ezequiel Toum, a doctor of engineering specializing in hydrology and a researcher at IANIGLA, said the portal answers a long-standing need to bring together environmental data that had been scattered across different institutions in the country. He added that the tool can serve not only water management but also risk management, Clarin.com reports.
Why it matters
The launch lands in the middle of a Súper Niño year that Clarin.com describes as particularly extreme, with consequences visible far beyond Argentina. The same live coverage notes that the unusually active Pacific hurricane season is being fueled by the recurring El Niño pattern.
Mendoza's economy and water supply depend heavily on snowmelt from the Andes, which makes the province sensitive to shifts in precipitation and temperature. A tool that combines real-time observation with scenario planning gives authorities and producers a way to prepare for both too much water and too little, rather than reacting after the fact.
The portal's dual focus on floods and droughts reflects that reality: in a single season, the same region can face both risks. By centralizing data that previously sat with separate agencies, the researchers aim to give decision-makers a single reference point.
Storms and smoke across three continents
The wider Súper Niño picture reported by Clarin.com includes severe weather on several fronts on the same day.
In California, heavy surf struck the southern coast on Friday, damaging homes and sending water into neighboring streets as residents braced for Tropical Storm Rachel. The storm, downgraded from hurricane status but still considered a threat, was projected to make an unusual landfall on the West Coast near the California-Mexico border early Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. Strong winds and heavy rain could cause further destruction and coastal flooding, Clarin.com reports.
Rachel is the latest system in a Pacific hurricane season that Clarin.com describes as unusually active, driven by the El Niño pattern.
In Mexico, Hurricane Simón intensified Friday night to Category 3 as it moved toward the Pacific coast, with forecasts pointing to further strengthening off the states of Colima and Jalisco and the possibility of a hard hit on the resort city of Puerto Vallarta. The U.S. National Hurricane Center reported maximum sustained winds of 195 kilometers per hour, with the storm possibly rising in category in the following hours, according to Clarin.com.
Simón was located about 245 kilometers south of Manzanillo and 415 kilometers south-southeast of Cabo Corrientes, moving slowly north-northeast at 11 kilometers per hour. That slow turn is expected to continue before the storm shifts north, taking its center very close to or over Mexico's central-western coast on Sunday. Clarin.com reports it could reach Category 4 before landfall; storms at that level on the Saffir-Simpson scale carry maximum sustained winds of 210 to 250 kilometers per hour.
Workers at businesses and restaurants in the affected area prepared barricades ahead of the hurricane's arrival.
In Southeast Asia, dense haze from fires in Indonesia continued to degrade air quality in Singapore on Saturday, sharply cutting outdoor visibility and keeping pollution levels very high. Singapore's environmental agency expected the Pollutant Standards Index to range between unhealthy and very unhealthy that day because of smoke from two months of uncontrolled forest fires in Indonesia, worsened by El Niño, Clarin.com reports.
The haze has spread as far as Vietnam and the Philippines and has affected more than 40 million people, according to environmental organizations cited by Clarin.com.
Regional forecasts point to a wet close to the year
Within Argentina, attention is also on the last stretch of 2026. The National Meteorological Service (SMN) presented its forecast for the final quarter of the year, pointing to rain and instability in Santa Fe, according to El Litoral.
Other regional outlets have focused on local exposure. Rosario3 examined the real risk El Niño poses to Rosario and which parts of the city could be affected, while Infocielo published an assessment of the phenomenon's impact on the Plata Basin covering the first month of rainfall.
Together with the Mendoza portal, those reports sketch a picture of a season in which preparation is largely a matter of water: where it falls, how much accumulates, and how quickly it moves.
What to watch
The coming days will show whether Simón reaches Category 4 before landfall in Mexico and how Tropical Storm Rachel behaves near the California-Mexico border, while Mendoza's new portal begins feeding real-time data into decisions about reservoirs, planting and flood risk.
