Like the headline the Star put on my story from Saturday: No El Nino or La Nina this year, just La Nada.
The crucial quote couple of graphs from the story, featuring media star and friend Bill Patzert:
Veteran forecaster Bill Patzert, who works with the NASA-affiliated Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena on long-range forecasts for Southern California, calls this condition "La Nada," because he thinks the word "neutral" misleadingly implies that rainfall will be moderate or "normal."
"You never want to say the word 'normal' when it comes to rain in Southern California, because in the last 100 years, we've only had a total of six 'normal' years of rainfall, meaning about 15 inches of rain in a winter in downtown L.A," he said. "We have had one of the wettest winters on record during a La Nada period, and one of the driest."
The graph is a few years old (2003). Patzert noted that during that freakish two weeks of rain in December 2010, it was positive, but as of late, has turned steadily negative.
