The forecast for rain for 2015-2016 followed El Niño convention. But the pattern broke the rules.

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The forecast for rain for 2015-2016 followed El Niño convention. But the pattern broke the rules.
The forecaster mood and message is upbeat these days, with less hedging and more agreement that, yes, this El Niño winter could be a wet one.
Two strong historical El Nino wet winters nurture hope for relief from our current drought. But there are several good reasons to hedge about the coming winter.
Current climate change research suggests California’s weather could become even more variable than in the past, a “new normal” of drier dry periods punctuated by wetter winter storms.
Global climate models are critical to understanding climate change, but they don’t tell us anything about changing temperatures and other surface level changes in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is what we need to know to plan for our future. A new model for the North Bay creates a closeup view critical for watershed managers. And soon the model will expand to cover all of California, 18 acres at a time.