Summer and fall storms could pack more of a wallop in the D.C. area this year due to a potential “super El Niño” pattern.

“A normal El Niño does already affect us in terms of storms and heat and rainfall and hurricanes and intensity,” 7News Chief Meteorologist Veronica Johnson said. “So, this year we’ve got a super El Niño.”

Occurring every two to seven years, El Niño is a cyclical and natural warming of patches of the equatorial Pacific that then alters the world’s weather patterns. Its counterpart, La Niña, is marked by waters that are cooler than average.

Seasonal models are predicting the strongest El Niño climate pattern on record, bringing with it potentially extreme heat waves, drought and humidity. It could also bring heavier downpours and longer, stronger stretches of thunderstorms to the region.

Starting mid-to-late summer or this fall, “we could be looking at long humid stretches, we could be looking at tropical feeling days as well as nights, and more heat index warnings to go along with those heavier rain events and downpours,” Johnson said.

As Pacific waters warm and shift eastward, “that warm water is going to be changing the jet stream and shifting the patterns, not just across the United States, but across the entire globe,” she said.

El Niño also subdues the Atlantic hurricane season because there is so much heat in the Pacific that it outcompetes the Atlantic Ocean.

Storms that do form can still bring soaking rain inland, raising the risk of flooding.

For those of us who cherish our trips to the beach, Johnson said that it “very well could” affect the weather on the shore.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.