Global experts have officially declared that this year would see the onset of a “super” El Niño, an extreme version of the weather cycle, and expect it to intensify rapidly from July to September. Mangala Sabar, 45, remembers the 2023-24 El Niño years “when the transplanting attempts failed twice in each year, and we lost the entire crop”. 2:58 Could ‘Godzilla’ El Niño bring the hottest year on record? Tailored forecasts are now being delivered to more than 38 million farmers via SMS and phone calls, including in Odisha. But there remains deep uncertainty as El Niño strengthens.