Dude, Where's My El Niño?

A quick note on terminology for normal people who don't obsess about this stuff:

• ENSO = the El Niño/Southern Oscillation

• ENSO Neutral = the ocean surface temperature anomaly in the ENSO 3.4 region is between +0.5°C and -0.5°C.

• El Niño/La Niña conditions exist when the anomaly is greater than (Niño) or less than (Niña) the half-degree cut-off for neutral.

• A full blown El Niño/La Niña is declared when the conditions persist for three overlapping three-month periods i.e. five consecutive months.

Here's where we were at last month:

And the latest, from IRI/Columbia University, June 15:

Here is the current range of model predictions: