Say, Ed, do you happen to have last year's diagram of the 6-mo. SST forecast from about this time? I haven't been saving the CPC weekly ENSO discussions, but I am trying to recall -- wasn't a La Nina also forecast at this time in 2006? And if so, I'd guess that the diagram would have looked pretty similar to this year's at this time.

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I did find some archived CPC information.

In April 2006, this NINO 3.4 forecast didn't show any indication of an El Nino event, but instead forecast ENSO-neutral conditions right out to the beginning of 2007:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/bulletin_0406/figf4b.gif

The forecast forum outlook for April 2006 was: "ENSO-neutral conditions are expected during the next 3-6 months." What's more, that was the continued outlook for May and June. And even in July, the forecast was only conservatively modified: "ENSO-neutral conditions are expected to continue for the next one to three months, with a 50% chance that weak warm episode (El Nino) conditions will develop by the end of 2006." This indicates the forecast is only accurate a month or two out.

The March 2007 outlook states, "A transition from ENSO-neutral to La Nina conditions is possible during the next 3 months." Yet Pacific equatorial SST anomalies continue to move in the positive, not negative, direction, and the thin finger of cool water continues to retreat -- while the remainder of the EastPAC north of the equator is warmer than usual, and the ITCZ is active.

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I found I'd saved a discussion from May last year. Most interesting was that the dynamic models in the diagram did predict the El Nino in spite of the CPC's forecast -- the CPC statistical models were mainly below zero. This year the model situation is reversed, with most of the dynamic models predicting La Nina.

I also looked at the depth anom for both the equator and 2N and 2S for the last week. A bit more of the cooler water is surfacing at the equator now, probably because of surface winds.

This lends more support for a La Nina.

But I'm starting to feel like there is no ENSO-neutral, just El Nino + La Nina.

There seem to be not only elements of both, in a strange combo, but a holding pattern right now, until the next wave gets things moving again, and when that will happen and what direction it will push things is not predictable.