Good point about the westerly wind anomalies.

Also, the SOI is not yet particularly strongly confirming this El Nino.

I am not at all convinced that our traditional way of assessing the strength of the phases of ENSO by measuring the temperature anomaly of the Nino 3.4 measurement area continues to be valid.

One can not help but notice that NOAA is reporting the values in the other Nino areas more often than I recall happening in the past.

The warming of the oceans raises a lot of questions in my mind about the validity of our approaches.

I would be paying a lot more attention to the Aleutian Low, the Hawaiian High and the North Pacific Index as well as the various currents and the behavior of the MJO.

Or we can wait for Japan to figure it out for us. They will.