El Niño could do more than mess with your weather forecast. It could eventually mess with the price and availability of the electronics and technology you use every day.

The reason lies far from the phone in your hand or the laptop screen in front of your face. It starts in mines that produce the raw materials needed to make those devices.

According to Chloe Demrovsky of the NYU Center for Global Affairs, that includes rare-earth minerals and copper, much of which is mined in countries that depend on hydropower.

And that creates a surprisingly big weather vulnerability, especially during a potentially historic El Niño.

"So (hydro-dams) are shut down due to either drought or extreme rainfall, because it could be one or the other, and that interrupts the mining operations," Demrovsky said.

(MORE: El Niño could hit your bank account and grocery cart)

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That means a weather pattern thousands of miles away could potentially ripple through the electronics supply chain.

Those raw materials are important for the silicon chips used in semiconductors, which end up in everything from smartphones and computers to the massive data centers powering artificial intelligence.

"All of our services are dependent on the AI boom and the AI, as some might call it, bubble," explained Demrovsky. "So it's not just the goods that are impacted, it could also be the services, as we're all using these new emerging technologies, figuring out what to do with them and embedding them across every possible company and sector."

(MORE: Can AI save the planet before it destroys it?)

As businesses increasingly build AI into everything from customer service to software and other everyday services, disruptions to the technology infrastructure behind it could have extremely broad economic effects.

"If those data centers aren't running reliably, that becomes a potential risk on the services side," she said

Then there's another piece of the puzzle: water.

(MORE: AI data centers may be warming the land around them)

At this point, it's no secret that data centers require enormous amounts of cooling, which means enormous amounts of water.

And, once again, El Niño can create problems at either extreme: too little water from drought or too much from extreme rainfall.

The takeaway? Weather doesn't have to hit your hometown to affect your life.

A shift in rainfall halfway around the world can disrupt a mine, which can affect a semiconductor, which can eventually affect the phone in your hand and even the services you're using on it.