ORLANDO, Fla. – The global-weather bully El Nino is waking up but might not have enough strength for another several weeks to swat the life out of hurricanes. “By then the hurricane season is pretty much over with,” said Vernon Kousky, a research meteorologist at the national Climate Prediction Center in Maryland.

But that’s not the only reason to watch out for the birth of an El Nino. The weather pattern generally brings wetter, cooler winters to the Southeast, meaning powerful thunderstorms could plague Florida this coming fall, winter and spring.

The prediction center announced late this week that temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator had climbed 1 degree – strong evidence that an El Nino is taking shape.

El Nino – which means the little boy or Christ child in Spanish – is so named because it was first recognized off the coast of South America as an event that often occurred near Christmas.

An El Nino throws ordinary weather patterns out of whack for a year or even two, which can be a mixed blessing for Florida and other Southern states. El Nino swats down hurricanes because it can unleash westerly winds that shred the storms.

Although predictions don’t extend to next year’s hurricane season, if El Nino sticks around that long, it could mean fewer hurricanes.

But for the coming months, forecasters are waiting to see whether El Nino forces the high-altitude jet stream to swerve deeply into the nation’s South, stirring up extraordinary weather from late fall to early spring.

“That just spells all kinds of activity,” Kousky said. “Just storm after storm.”

Florida has had some of its rainiest years on record because of the weather shift.

Kousky doesn’t think El Nino will form fully in time to put a damper on this year’s hurricane season.

Conditions remain mostly normal in the Pacific Ocean along the equator. When El Nino is in play, that region can turn stormy, he said.