KC N26: 265.85 – 248.00
N26 / U26: 6.75 – 5.00
Market levels referenced in this update reflect conditions as of June 5, 2026.
On New Years Eve 1996, in the small hamlet of Stafford, CA which was nestled beneath ancient redwood trees, torrential rains caused a catastrophic mudslide that wiped out seven homes and damaged seven others. More than half of the small community lay under a slide as wide as a football field and 25 feet deep.
On the other side of the world, in the Southern Hemisphere, historic draughts struck coffee producing countries. Indonesia’s robusta crop was devastated leading to severe shortages of commercial grade coffees. The inland shipping rivers of South America dropped to levels making it nearly impossible to move arabica coffees from farms to the coastal ports for exports.
Two distant parts of the world suffered very different, yet equally brutal, weather events driven by the same atmospheric force, a “Super” El Nino. El Ninos form when the usual easterly trade winds in the Pacific Ocean weaken and eventually reverse their course. Warm ocean water that typically accumulates in the western Pacific drifts eastward. Sea temperatures spike heating the air above disrupting the Walker Circulation, which in turn alters jet-streams. High pressure causes that air to sink, suppressing cloud formation and rainfall. The result is drought across large swaths of the Southern Hemisphere. Coffee production suffers.