El Niño can cause significant changes in rainfall and temperature patterns across different regions of South America. Although the phenomenon does not directly cause data loss, its effects can compromise servers, storage systems, computers, backup systems, and other equipment essential to the operations of businesses and institutions.
Heavy rainfall, flooding, thunderstorms, power outages, extreme heat, and wildfires are among the events that can affect IT infrastructure.
When a company does not have an adequate business continuity and disaster recovery plan, a weather-related event can result not only in physical damage, but also in operational disruptions and the loss of critical information.
What Is El Niño?
El Niño is a climate phenomenon characterized by the abnormal warming of the surface waters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. This warming alters global atmospheric circulation, affecting wind, pressure, and humidity patterns, which can significantly change rainfall and temperature regimes in various parts of the world.
This phenomenon is part of a natural cycle known as ENSO (El Niño–Southern Oscillation), which alternates between warming phases (El Niño), cooling phases (La Niña), and neutral conditions. During El Niño, changes in the distribution of heat across the ocean directly influence cloud formation and precipitation systems, shifting areas of heavy rainfall and periods of drought toward regions that do not normally experience these patterns.
El Niño is not a hurricane, cyclone, or storm with a specific path. Its effects develop gradually, may take weeks or months to intensify, and can remain active for an extended period, typically between 9 and 12 months, although in some cases they may last even longer.
In July 2026, the NOAA confirmed the presence of El Niño and indicated that the phenomenon is expected to continue strengthening through the end of the year. The INMET also points to a greater likelihood of above-average rainfall in areas of Brazil’s Southern Region, reduced rainfall across the country’s central and northern regions, and elevated temperatures throughout much of Brazil.
These climate changes can have significant indirect impacts on businesses, especially those that rely on sensitive physical infrastructure. Increased rainfall can raise the risk of flooding, while periods of extreme heat can overload cooling systems. Changes in wind patterns and storms can also affect the stability of the power grid.
As a result, these conditions can increase businesses’ exposure to incidents involving physical infrastructure, power supply, cooling systems, and IT system availability, requiring greater attention to preventive planning and operational continuity.
How Can El Niño Increase the Risk of Data Loss?
El Niño does not damage files or equipment by itself. The risk lies in the weather-related and operational events associated with the phenomenon.
Depending on the region, businesses may face heavy rainfall, flooding, storms, heat waves, prolonged droughts, and wildfires. Each of these events poses a different threat to technology infrastructure and stored data.
Heavy Rainfall and Flooding
Increased rainfall can cause flooding in businesses, offices, hospitals, industrial facilities, logistics centers, public institutions, and data centers.
Water can reach servers, storage systems, NAS and SAN systems, computers, hard drives, SSDs, backup tapes, network equipment, uninterruptible power supplies, and electrical installations.
The risk is not limited to direct contact with water. Mud, sewage, salt, chemical residue, and other contaminants can accelerate corrosion and damage electronic components.
Additionally, submerged equipment can suffer short circuits and additional damage if powered on without a technical assessment.
Power Outages and Voltage Fluctuations
Storms can cause sudden power outages, voltage spikes, electrical surges, and failures in uninterruptible power supplies or generators.
An unexpected shutdown can interrupt read and write operations, leaving file systems, databases, RAID volumes, and virtual machines in an inconsistent state.
In these cases, the server may fail to boot, the RAID system may become inaccessible, virtual machines may become corrupted, and databases may lose consistency. Even when the drives do not sustain physical damage, an abrupt interruption can cause logical data loss and system downtime.
Extreme Heat and Cooling System Failures
Rising temperatures also pose a risk to IT infrastructure.
Servers, storage systems, switches, controllers, uninterruptible power supplies, and batteries depend on adequate ventilation and cooling conditions. During periods of extreme heat, cooling systems may operate beyond their capacity or fail.
Overheating can cause emergency shutdowns, shorten component lifespan, trigger simultaneous drive failures, damage power supplies, reduce redundancy in RAID systems, and corrupt data after unexpected shutdowns.
Server rooms without temperature monitoring, redundant cooling systems, or adequate ventilation are more vulnerable.
Fires and Smoke
In regions where El Niño contributes to periods of drought and elevated temperatures, there may be an increased risk of wildfires and urban fires. Cemaden warns that the effects of the phenomenon may include droughts in Brazil’s North and Northeast regions, heat waves in the Southeast and Central-West, and heavy rainfall in the South.
Equipment can be damaged by direct contact with fire, exposure to extreme temperatures, smoke, soot, and the water used to extinguish the fire.
Even devices that do not appear to have been burned may sustain internal damage caused by heat, residue, and contaminants.
Which Systems Are Most Exposed?
The impact of a climate-related event can affect everything from individual devices to entire storage and virtualization environments.
Hard drives, SSDs, computers, physical servers, RAID systems, NAS, DAS, SAN, databases, virtual machines, tape libraries, and backup storage systems can all be affected.
The level of risk depends on the location of the equipment, the quality of the electrical infrastructure, the cooling systems in place, the availability of redundancy, and the organization’s business continuity plan.
Systems installed in basements, near floor level, or in rooms without protection against moisture, heat, and power fluctuations are at greater risk.
Why Might Backups Not Be Enough?
Maintaining backups is essential, but simply having a copy of the files does not guarantee that the data will be available after a disaster.
A backup can fail when it is stored in the same building as the server, connected to the same power grid, located on the same storage system as the production environment, or has never been tested through a restoration process.
Problems can also occur when the backup is incomplete or corrupted, depends on unavailable credentials, or was interrupted during a power outage.
During a flood or fire, the server and the backup can be affected by the same event when they are located in the same physical environment.
How Can You Protect Data Before a Weather-Related Event?
Preparation should take place before a storm warning is issued or a critical period begins.
Identify Essential Systems
The company should list the servers, applications, databases, virtual machines, and files required to maintain its core operations.
It is also important to define which systems must be restored first and how long each operation can remain unavailable.
Keep Backups in Separate Locations
Keep Backups in Separate Locations
An appropriate strategy can combine local copies, off-site storage, offline media, cloud services, and geographic separation.
Test the Restoration Process
A backup only proves its value when it can be successfully restored.
Tests should confirm file integrity, credential functionality, system compatibility, database consistency, and the time required to resume operations.
It is also important to verify encryption keys, dependencies between applications, and the proper functioning of virtual machines.
Protect the Electrical Infrastructure
Properly sized uninterruptible power supplies (UPS systems), surge protection devices, adequate grounding, and generators can reduce the impact of power disruptions.
Batteries must be tested regularly. A UPS without proper maintenance may fail precisely when the company needs it most.
Monitor Temperature and Humidity
Server rooms should have temperature and humidity monitoring, automated alerts, and, when required by the criticality of the environment, redundant cooling systems.
Monitoring helps identify failures before excessive heat causes equipment to shut down.
Avoid Placing Equipment Directly on the Floor
Servers, storage systems, UPS units, backup devices, and electrical panels should not be placed directly on the floor in locations with a history of flooding.
Whenever possible, critical equipment should be moved to elevated areas or upper floors with less exposure to water.
Create a Disaster Recovery Plan
The plan should define responsibilities, emergency contacts, recovery priorities, backup locations, strategic vendors, and the criteria for engaging external specialists.
It should also specify how systems will be shut down, which services will be restored first, and how the organization will communicate during the disruption.
Planning reduces the need for improvised decisions during a crisis.
What Should You Do When Equipment Is Exposed to Water?
When servers, storage systems, computers, hard drives, or other devices come into contact with water, the initial decisions can directly affect the chances of successful recovery.
In this situation:
1. Disconnect the power supply, provided it can be done safely.
2. Do not turn the equipment back on.
3. Do not use a hair dryer, oven, or any other heat source.
4. Do not open the hard drives.
5. Do not run data recovery or RAID reconstruction software.
6. Document the position and order of the drives.
7. Seek assistance from a specialized company.
In RAID systems, each drive should be identified according to its original position. Changing the order may make the logical reconstruction of the array more difficult.
What Should You Do After a Power Outage?
When a server fails to boot after a power outage, repeatedly restarting it can make the problem worse.
Before making any recovery attempt, check for unusual noises, the condition of the drives, any messages displayed by the controller, the original RAID configuration, and the availability of backups.
It is also necessary to assess the integrity of virtual machines, file systems, and databases.
Do not perform an automatic RAID rebuild without first identifying the cause of the failure. A rebuild started with faulty drives, an incorrect drive order, or incorrect parameters can overwrite critical information.
Which Actions Should Be Avoided?
After an incident, do not power on wet equipment, do not open hard drives outside a clean room, and do not replace circuit boards without a proper diagnosis.
Formatting, partition recreation, running CHKDSK, forced RAID rebuilds, and changes to the drive order should also be avoided.
Writing new data to the affected device or using the original backup as a testing environment can also reduce the chances of successful recovery.
When the data is important, all recovery attempts should be stopped until the problem has been properly identified.
How Can Digital Recovery Help?
When a weather-related event compromises servers, storage systems, RAID arrays, or backup devices, Digital Recovery performs a technical assessment to identify physical and logical damage.
We specialize in recovering data from hard drives, SSDs, servers, RAID systems, storage systems, databases, virtual machines, and backup tapes.
We can also assess equipment affected by water, fire, smoke, extreme heat, or electrical failures.
Each case is assessed individually. The possibility of recovery depends on the type of device, the extent of the damage, and any recovery attempts made after the incident.
Prevention and Response Are Part of the Same Strategy
El Niño should be treated as an additional risk factor for business continuity, especially in regions exposed to heavy rainfall, flooding, extreme heat, drought, or wildfires.
Prevention involves protecting the infrastructure, maintaining independent backups, testing restoration procedures, and preparing a disaster recovery plan.
When prevention is not enough and systems are compromised, taking the right actions within the first few hours can prevent further damage and preserve the chances of recovering the data.
