I couldn't agree more that anlogues are no way to make a forecast, with or without climate change. We had a blog about this during the course of the last year: check out http://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/why-past-enso-cases-are…   But anlaogues are interesting and are not completely worthless or irrelevant. Despite climate change, most scientists would agree that so far, even with the amount of climate change we have already had, the ENSO phenomenon has not changed materially and has not begun playing by very different rules. There have possibly been trends in certain details, such as a greater tendency toward central Pacific El Nino events, but these have not been marked. Regarding the tendency for southern California to get above normal rainfall in late winter with moderate-plus or strong El Nino events, it shows up not only in past cases (analogues) but is also confirmed in dynamical model experiments using the equations of the ocean and atmosphere. But if your point is that there is appreciable uncertainty in the forecast for late winter precipiation in California, hey, I'm 100% in agreement! We should be hopeful, but not get our hopes up too much.