The Nature Journal of 10 September 2015 Vol 525 Page 162 had a short note about this year’s El Niño.

A comparison of the El Niño weather pattern in 1997 and 2015 shows how the two had developed in a strikingly similar fashion by August in each of the years. Sea-surface temperature data from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, shows each El Niño as a band of warmer-than-usual water (orange) along the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean — with added warmth to the north in 2015.

See the issue at link to article.

What impresses me even more than the band near the equator are the two orange/yellow spots near the west coast of North America. Those are called “the blob” in local news media. Since I live near the central California coast, we are well acquainted with the increased temperatures of the ocean this summer. It is really weird! Wikipedia discusses el blob in more detail here.

It would be nice if it rained a little bit every day from November through February, but I fear we’ll get dumped on in a few major storms, and then the drought will return.

“…Thunder and lightning. Enter three witches.” by Shakespeare, scene direction in Macbeth