Listening to JB’s summary today, he addressed the anomalies associated with this El Nino. The waters off the northern Australian coast are unusually warm (Darwin is used with the SOI measurement) which has created unexpected pressure differences throwing the SOI values to neutral. The reason for the warmer waters may be due to undersea seismic/volcanic activity (Joe is big on this whole deep sea seismic activity warming the oceans – who knows but he may be right.) In any event he sees the beginnings of La Nina in the mid Pacific based upon measured SSTs south of the equator. Regardless, there is some agreement with you that this El Nino is over and it’s time to see how fast La Nina comes on this Spring.