The Panama Canal Authority is stepping up efforts to brace for El Niño-fueled weather extremes by drafting a plan that avoids limiting the type of vessel restrictions that hampered shipping through the waterway three years ago.

“We are managing this El Niño from a different angle,” canal administrator Ricaurte Vásquez Morales said in an interview in Washington.

The authority overseeing the Central American waterway is revisiting lessons learned from Panama’s 2023-24 drought to come up with a playbook in anticipation of a longer dry season that could start as early as November, Morales said. The previous El Niño dried up freshwater lakes supplying the Panama Canal, causing the agency to impose daily transit restrictions that caused ship congestion and a re-routing of trade flows.

Planners who typically assess draft restrictions in December are already reviewing the rules that limit cargo weight to prepare for the upcoming dry season. A ship’s draft is how deep a ship can sit in the water. Ample rains have allowed for drafts of as much as 50 feet. Most vessels transiting the largest of the canal locks, known as neo-Panamax, have an average draft of 47 feet to 49.5 feet. 

Moderate measures such as restricting the vessel draft by one foot could be deployed by the end of June, Morales said.

The Panama Canal has swung between extremes in recent months as the region emerged from the rainiest dry season in 70 years of recorded history. The incoming weather phenomenon, which could evolve into what’s dubbed a “super El Niño,” is just the latest test for planning canal operations, but judging its intensity and impacts remains a challenge.

“How severe is very difficult to tell,” Morales said.