How to Prepare Your Ranch for El Niño and a Wet Winter
By Tristan Brenner,
Senior Stewardship Manager
August 11, 2026
A record-strength El Niño is on track for this winter. Here’s what forecasters are seeing, what to do before the rains, and how MALT can help.
The short version: a strong El Niño is building, and this fall is the time to get your ranch ready. It may bring a hard, wet winter. It may not. California’s rainfall swings hard from year to year, and even a strong signal shifts the odds without setting the outcome. But it’s a real enough possibility that preparing now is the precautionary move for anyone managing land in Marin.
The work is fall work, not storm-day work. Most of it has to happen before the ground gets muddy. And it isn’t all risk. A big water year can nearly double a ranch’s forage, so the operations that come through best will be the ones ready for the hard side and set up to use the good.
None of what follows is new to a rancher who has weathered a wet winter. Take it as a checklist for an unusual season, and a reminder that you don’t have to face it alone. MALT and a range of local and federal partners can help, and you’ll find the manuals, programs, and contacts worth knowing at the end of this post.
What the Forecasters Are Seeing
This is not a normal seasonal outlook. El Niño is already here and still building, and the models now point to a very strong event as the most likely outcome, with a real chance of the strongest on record. NOAA puts the odds it holds through winter and into early spring at 97 percent.
A strong El Niño still isn’t a rain forecast. The last time one was billed as a “Godzilla,” in 2015 and 2016, the Bay Area’s winter came in drier than expected. What it does, though, is stack the deck toward the long, back-to-back atmospheric rivers that cause the real trouble. Researchers at UCLA and NCAR recently found that a warming climate has already roughly doubled the odds of the kind of prolonged storm sequence that produces catastrophic flooding. Those sequences tend to land in strong El Niño years like this one.
We don’t have to reach for a hypothetical. The last strong El Niño, in 1997 and 1998, caused about $2.5 million in landslide damage in Marin County. And the county isn’t waiting: it has already set aside $250,000 for winter flood preparation.
The point isn’t alarm. It’s that the odds are high enough, and the stakes local enough, to get ahead of it rather than wait it out.
Your Pre-Winter Checklist
Roads, first. They fail first.
• Get to more of your road system than usual, and earlier. A big water year finds every soft spot you left behind.
• Shape the road to shed water rather than carry it: rolling dips, a re-crowned surface, clean drains, and the shoulder berms pulled back so water sheets off the side.
• Harden the weak spots: fresh aggregate on the thin stretches, clean rock in the potholes, an eroding bend armored before it lets go.
• At every culverted crossing, make sure there’s a critical dip, so a plugged culvert spills back into the channel instead of running down the road.
• Leave existing vegetation in the ditches to slow the flow, and stay off the roads when the ground is saturated.
Pasture and range
• Leave higher residual dry matter on steep and thin-soil ground, and utilize the low pastures a little more.
• Expect a heavy weed year and higher parasite pressure come spring. Grazing at higher, more concentrated stocking rates with faster rotations answers both.
• This is an ideal year to seed perennial pasture grass and forb species, sufficient precipitation coupled with above average temperatures and the likelihood that cattle will be excluded from pastures longer than normal will give the seed a chance to take.
Creeks and water
• Please be aware that activities that require soil disturbance in and around creeks often require permitting. Please contact MALT Stewardship staff before completing any substantive activity or with questions about permitting.
• Visual assessment of creek crossings, streambanks and erosion zones
• Watch for woody debris that could take out a crossing or a well house,
• Check the freeboard and spillways on ponds and manure lagoons.
• Stage diversion material where you can reach it in a storm, and if you catch rainwater, add tank capacity now.
Livestock and buildings
• Give stock dry ground and real shelter; wet feet mean hoof rot.
• Bring the herd into winter in good condition.
• Give the barns and outbuildings the same walk-through. Storms have torn roofs off along Tomales Bay.
To make the most of the upside
• Keep seed on hand, be ready to move animals often, and try seeding ground you’d normally leave alone.
What MALT Helps Fund
You don’t have to do all of this on your own budget. Since 2002, MALT has awarded about $4.5 million in stewardship grants to help ranchers do exactly this kind of work, most of it through two programs.
• The Stewardship Assistance Program has put roughly $2.5 million into on-the-ground projects, from erosion control to water infrastructure.
• The Small Grants Program has funded close to $1.2 million more, in focused rounds for specific needs, from grazing systems to water distribution.
These programs share a single purpose: keeping working ranches viable through whatever the climate brings. A wet winter is the next test, and the same support applies. If it helps to talk through what to prioritize, or what might qualify, that’s what we’re here for.
Resources
A few resources worth knowing, beyond what MALT offers directly:
• Marin County The Agricultural Commissioner’s office and Public Works, Land Development Division, Fire Department for permits, culvert questions, and storm response.
• USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Federal cost-share and technical assistance, including emergency programs after major storms.
• Marin Resource Conservation District (RCD) Resource library for best management practices constructing roads
• UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE), Marin Rangeland, livestock, and forage guidance, plus workshops.
• Handbook for Forest, Ranch and Rural Roads The standard reference for rural road drainage and storm-proofing, from Pacific Watershed Associates, available through the Marin Resource Conservation District.
In It for the Long Haul
Preparing for one hard winter is part of something longer. MALT is closing in on its 100th protected ranch, nearly 100 easements and more than 59,000 acres held in perpetuity. But protection was always the beginning, not the end.
What it makes possible is everything that comes after: keeping the land working, keeping it healthy, and keeping these ranches viable for the families who run them and the generation that will run them next. That means being a partner through the dry years and the wet ones alike.
The rains will be here before we know it. There’s still time to get ready, and we’re glad to help. Start with the road that worries you most, and work down from there.