For Weather Freaks & Geeks: the NOAA El Nino Page

So if there’s one positive spinoff outcome of our collective Climate Change fears, it’s a greater understanding and respect for the science behind understanding climate and weather. {All Republican presidential candidates can now leave the room (like they’d be here anyway!), as the following is for intelligent grown-ups.} Below is the url of NOAA’s El Nino status page, which being the weather geek that I am, I check often, because if you want some practical advice about predicting the weather in the West, this actually works. The latest report is that we’re in a La Nina cycle, no surprise there, although the fact that it’s now two years in a row is somewhat unusual, but not unheard of. But take a look at this pdf document. The charts and data are fascinating. In Tim Flannery’s excellent nonfiction book Here on Earth he describes how more and more weather sensors are being placed around the globe, in air/water/land, and how we’re getting more and more accurate in recording actual temperature/precipitation etc all across the planet. Personally I think it’s kind of cool to see the data on temperature fluctuations in the Pacific, and explanations of how it affects weather in the U.S. Plus it changes often. Colorado, for instance, has seen some improvement in its weather forecast for the next few months, while Texas is still in a serious drought.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf