Hi Alex,

The eastern tropical Pacific has been warmer than normal and even above the minimum threshold for El Nino since fall, but the atmospheric conditions have not been consistent with El Nino until more recently (stay tuned for more on this topic in the next blog post!).  Regarding your comment about weather being more complicated than El Nino, there is no argument here!  As we noted in our Winter Outlook post, we expected other drivers like the Madden-Julian Oscillation and Arctic Oscillation to play important roles in our winter weather this year, both those drivers are much more difficult than ENSO to predict several months in advance.