Sometimes its better to just stick with the initial forecast. Yes, as the observations increasingly move against you, the forecaster will become increasingly anxious, but if you lock in your prediction from January you will be less gung-ho and more conservative with your initial forecast next time round. Besides, where’s the motivation to be correct if you can change what you think is going to happen as quick as you can say willy-nilly. Boom. But on a more serious “let’s be scientific” note, I’m wondering what impact the MJO/ clouds have on the SST record on very short time periods. The cool Nino anomalies just about disappeared AND then returned with vengeance all within the space of a couple of weeks. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/clim/sst.anom.anim.week.html