Watch Out, Here Comes El Nino

From the Minot Daily News:
Looking ahead, it appears that El Nino is continuing to develop. El Nino was in the early stages of development a month ago, too early for the NWS to consider including it in the climate forecast with any degree of certainty. Now though, as El Nino continues to form, the NWS has issued an El Nino Watch for 2012.
"We were expecting it to develop. It takes three consecutive months to say we've got an El Nino," explained Mathews. "We are expecting it to develop in September. El Nino is here."
El Nino is a warming of sea surface temperatures in the eastern Equatorial Pacific Ocean. Evidence of that process first surfaced in July and has continued. The expectation is that El Nino will continue through the upcoming winter. The effect on North Dakota can be a substantial change from what is considered a normal winter.
The El Nino Watch favors below normal temperatures and precipitation in the fall and above normal temperatures and below normal snowfall for the winter months. Warmer winter conditions for the state would be the result of El Nino diverting the polar jet stream further north. The current Climate Outlook takes into consideration the warm and dry conditions that currently exist throughout much of the state.
http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/567868/Dry--hot--El-Nino-ahead.html?nav=5010
Here is more information on El Nino:
 http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~pierce/elnino/whatis.html