Weldu Yiheysh, a farmer in Shibta District of Enderta Wereda in the Southeast Zone, was still waiting to sow last week. The rainy season should be the most important stretch of his year, the weeks on which a whole household's food supply depends.

But the rain has not come.

“Most of the district has had none at all,” he told Fortune. "In the few areas where rain fell, and farmers managed to sow, the rains have now stopped, and the crops that were sown are at risk.”

In the Tigray Regional State, farmers like Weldu watch the sky. However, well into the planting season, it stays stubbornly clear. When the rain finally came, it was erratic, too little in some places, and destructive in others.

For a region still emerging from one of the deadliest recent wars, the shifting weather is more than a seasonal nuisance. It could be the second blow of a one-two that would tip a fragile recovery back into crisis.

Weldu’s fear is for his family and his animals alike. Suppose the season continues like this, his and his family’s lives will be in danger. The fertiliser and seeds he bought with “great difficulty” would become worthless.

“Even if the rains begin later, the crops sown earlier may be overturned,” he feared. “We urgently need support with additional seeds and fertilisers so that we can sow again."

His anxiety now has a name in “El Niño,” the recurring warming of Pacific surface waters that disrupts weather systems worldwide. Weather forecasters expect it to reach Ethiopia during the 2026 rainy season.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the Ethiopian Meteorology Institute (EMI) and the Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission (EDRMC) have all warned that the moisture stress it brings could threaten farm production in the country's more vulnerable areas.

Tigray Regional State is among the most exposed. The two-year war has stripped away its capacity to cope, and El Niño is likely to bite harder there than almost anywhere else. The full damage to the Region's food system remains insufficiently documented, but recovery has been painfully slow. Fertiliser and improved seed are scarce, and production still lags well behind pre-war levels.

The reversal is bitter because the gains were real. Over three decades, the Region built a reputation for community-led environmental restoration through soil and water conservation, watershed rehabilitation, reforestation, and genetic resource conservation.

Much of that was undone by the war and then compounded by severe drought during the agricultural seasons that followed 2022, especially in south-eastern districts such as Yechila.

The Region’s disaster response officials have developed scenarios based on 10 years of analogue experience. According to the Tigray Disaster Risk Management Commission’s (DRMC) assessment, 21 districts face an extreme risk of severe moisture stress, while 16 are critically vulnerable and 13 are moderately affected. But the highest risk is expected in the southern, south-eastern, and eastern parts of the Region, as well as in pockets in the central and north-eastern districts.

The assessment was prepared jointly by regional government institutions, United Nations agencies and humanitarian organisations. A 45-day anticipatory action plan and a nine-month emergency preparedness and response plan have been developed.

“It’s a national concern,” said Gebrehiwot Gebregziabher (PhD), commissioner. “The document has also been shared with the federal Disaster Risk Management Commission.”

Regional officials like him have set up technical and political task forces across the agriculture, health, water and disaster-management bureaus, and public-awareness campaigns are under way.

"The war has severely weakened our capacity,” Gebrehiwot told Fortune.

The war's deepest wound is in the soil. According to the Ethiopian Agriculture Task-force, an initiative led by the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Ministry of Agriculture, and regional agriculture bureaus, about 328,000hct of farmland is believed to have been damaged, and about half of the Region's arable land is beyond reach, cut off by conflict, insecurity and access constraints.

The disruption has driven hunger even deeper, with 2.5 million people needing food assistance last year in a Region where farming remains the primary source of livelihood.

About 83pc of the population is on the land, working about 1.5 million hectares of farmland. A predominantly rural population, most farmers like Weldu tend small and non-contiguous plots. Such fragmented holdings limit output even in good years and slow recovery when conflict, drought and blocked roads disrupt planting, harvesting and supply.

“But, we must communicate carefully. People need to prepare, not panic."

For Alembirhan Harifeyo, head of the Tigray Agriculture & Natural Resources Bureau, the forecast cannot be read in isolation. He put the probability of El Niño occurrence between 63pc and 70pc.