There was a great bit of humorous business that my offspring Reed helped me cook up over the weekend for this column, which ended up on the self-editing floor. The column was in part about how we all put too much stock in El Niño as our savior from drought, and Reed reminded me of that great scene in Life of Brian where a frustrated Brian is trying to explain to the throng assembled outside his Mum’s apartment that he is not the Messiah:
BRIAN: Look. You’ve got it all wrong. You don’t need to follow me. You don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves. You’re all individuals!
FOLLOWERS: Yes, we’re all individuals!
BRIAN: You’re all different!
FOLLOWERS: Yes, we are all different!
DENNIS: I’m not.
ARTHUR: Shhhh.
FOLLOWERS: Shh. Shhhh. Shhh.
BRIAN: You’ve all got to work it out for yourselves!
FOLLOWERS: Yes! We’ve got to work it out for ourselves!
BRIAN: Exactly!
FOLLOWERS: Tell us more!
BRIAN: No! That’s the point! Don’t let anyone tell you what to do!
So many layers there – El Niño, named after the Christ child, but as the column explains, it’s really not our savior. But it was a bridge too far for a newspaper column.
In my ENSO watching experience, the best thing about an El Nino fall/winter/spring season was that it wasn’t La Nina. A weak to moderate El Nino was not as likely to give NM above average precipitation as was a similar strength La Nina likely to result in drier than normal conditions. Sometimes the best scenario for winter snowfall was an ENSO neutral condition where the storm track favored southern Colorado and the high NM mountains near the Colorado border…leading to at least a normal spring runoff and sometimes better. A moderate to strong El Nino often benefited southern and eastern NM more so than southern Colorado and northwestern NM. When you throw in the state of the AMO and PDO, you can further muddy the waters or dry out the dirt. Bottom line for most New Mexicans is…does water come out of the faucet…which renders all of the above as meh.