RE: California sure feels like La Nina
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Yes, the precipitation over the western US has been pretty typical La Nina, with California mostly dry and relatively wetter farther north, although from what I can see (from the weekly ENSO discussion found here), the regions of above-average precipitation in Oregon and Washington are more limited than typical. So, both the typical La Nina pattern and the one we have experienced this year have been effective at keeping the storm track north of California. Regarding the trends in pressure patterns and precipitation, I have not looked closely at this yet, although winter trends in both pressure and precipitation are much noisier than those of surface temperature.