El Niño, a weather pattern that can wreak havoc in the Asia-Pacific region, will stay at least until spring 2007, the monthly report by the US Climate Prediction Centre has announced.

The CPC, an agency of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, said that El Niño will stay "for the remainder of 2006 and into the northern hemisphere spring of 2007." El Niño is an abnormal warming of waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean which causes wild swings in weather from Asia to South America, causing searing drought in some and rampant flooding in others.

The CPC said "typical" El Niño effects are likely to develop over North America during the winter. This would include "warmer-than-average temperatures over western and central Canada, and over the western and northern United States; wetter-than-average conditions over portions of the US Gulf Coast and Florida; and drier-than-average conditions in the Ohio Valley and the Pacific Northwest."