scientists are beginning to wonder if the 15-year period of relative El Nino calm is coming to a close, marking the start of a warmer, stormier era akin to the 1980s and 90s.
Meanwhile, here we are in mid-December with absolutely zilch to show for it in the Northern Hemisphere (taken as US southern tier and west coast) and nothing on the horizon out to year end: no clouds, no rain, no wind, no nothing, nada, same old zonal flow of past millenia.
If the hype keeps up but the weather does not cooperate, we may see some niño-scepticism emerge. However I am confident excuses can and will be prepared. In fact, in press accounts, the CYA groundwork has already been laid out: 'we don't have any statistical record for monster el ninos so anything could happen, it's the blob's fault, the winds stopped blowing at the last minute (otherwise we had it nailed), it's being offset by this or that oscillation or trend, surface temps are higher than they would otherwise have been (our models say),...'
Reading back in this forum suggests the main event is happening one day at a time with little or no forecasting skill out farther than a week and that no one has any useful information to offer on the practical consequences for California drought, Oregon snow deficit, Arizona spring floristics, Colorado River catchment etc etc etc.
The risk here is in over-stating our predictive abilities for complex systems. Getting it wrong undermines the public trust on every aspect of coming climate change.