Hi Phil,

Michelle wrote a really nice article describing the continuum that El Nino events can occur along. One key point in her article was that weaker El Niños tend to be closer to the Central Pacific types and stronger El Niños tend to be closer to Eastern Pacific types.

So I wouldn't necessarily classify the 6 strong events as CP events (with the caveat that, as I noted, there is nuance here)

As for variables following the trends of the past two events, it's hard to compare when the sample size is n=2. The other difficulty is the impact the above-average ocean temperatures worldwide might be having as well.