Cliff Mass, who wrote the book "The Weather of the Pacific Northwest,"
has a wonderful weather blog that some of you may enjoy. He has been
describing how El Nino is affecting temperatures in our region. Great
graphics.
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/

"The problem of course is El Nino. As shown in the figure below, the
tropical Pacific is much warmer than normal, and the second figure shows
the variation of central Pacific surface temperature (the famous Nino
3.4 zone) is roughly 1.5C above normal. Both of these figures suggest a
moderate El Nino right now and this is NOT going to change during the
next few months. As I have explained before, El Ninos are associated
with above normal temperatures and below normal precip after January 1.
And substantially lower than normal spring snowpacks. Now, lets be
careful...this is a correlation, not an exact prediction. El Nino
winters tend to have less snow, but some have had more than normal. Now
the problem we have is that we are starting the El Nino season with a
below normal snowpack..Lots of the NW is 65-80% of normal. And the
latest long-term prediction of the Climate Prediction Center reflects
the El Nino correlation...Warmer than normal from Washington to the
upper Plains. Wetter and cooler than normal along the southern tier of
states."

Angela Percival
Olympia, WA
Angela at stillwatersci dot com