It's been a wild ride weather-wise for the last 3 years here in California. Our problems with respect to droughts, fire and heat have been well publicized in the media world-wide, so I'll not retell them here. Ironically, the thing that could save our bacon in 2014 may be the thing that drives you nuts come winter. Or, if you live in the right place, make you very happy indeed. It's that periodic weather phenomenon called El Niño.
If you live in California or Western Canada, you'll likely look forward to it even though it brings some problems. If you're in the Eastern half of North America, not so much. If you're in China or Australia (or anywhere in Australasia) you are probably going to be very unhappy. Your misery is likely to be shared across Mexico, Central America and South America too. However, "forewarned is forearmed" as the old saying goes, and that's what I wanted to do for these forums, which is now reasonably international in terms of its membership.
I've never fully understood how this El Niño phenomenon works even though I've experienced the effects of it 3 times now. Below is a link to an excellent video from NASA that explains the entire process and how it gets determined if an El Niño event is occurring. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is giving it a 70% chance of occurring in 2014. U.S., Canadian and European weather services haven't given probability figures yet, but from reading, you sense their unpublished, internal numbers are slightly higher. It may be a good idea to for readers of these forums to start educating themselves about how El Niño will effect their locale, should it occur.
Here's the El Niño explaination video ==>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... axPwASV2kYRegards,
Lonnie