Clear, bright sunshine and not-so-cold temperatures this Wednesday afternoon on California’s north coast, enveloped in a nice stretch of outside-conditions this week — no rain forecast until Sunday.
The NWS is ‘expecting quiet weather‘ to ring in the New Year.

Then back to our rain-storm-business-as-usual weather, just badder (via NBC News): ‘But a Dec. 27 satellite image from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which measures sea surface heights, implies the worst of the droughts and flooding are still to come — a forecast that is troubling to humanitarian relief agencies.’

And not just from my little patch of region, but worldwide, from Ethiopian drought, to a “wetter and stormier California,”  — El Niño is apparently just getting warmed-up.

(Illustration: Salvador Dali’s ‘Galatea of the Spheres,’ found here).

Afterwards, for all of us along the US Northwest we can expect ‘conveyor-belt’ rainstorms to return, all-ratcheted-up again next week.
Meanwhile, waters of the Pacific Ocean were already heating-up well-before El Niño started churning eastward, and now are really warm, an effect which has caused problems with marine life, especially seals.
Per today’s Guardian:

The warming of the Pacific Ocean caused by the El Niño climate event is “causing havoc” among marine animals off California’s coast, with unprecedented numbers of dead or starving seals being washed ashore.
…
Mothers of seal pups born on California’s channel islands, found west of Los Angeles, are finding it difficult to find their usual prey of sardines and anchovies, which are moving to cooler areas further north to escape sea temperatures that are 2-4C warmer than average.
This means that pups, initially reliant on their mother for nutritious milk, are underweight and understrength when they have to find their own food.
“They can’t dive as deep, they can’t hold their breath as long,” said Dr Shawn Johnson, director of veterinary science at the Marine Mammal Center.
“We have been rescuing four-month-old pups weighing 4-5kg, which is typically their birth weight. They should be double that. We are finding pups at record low weights. It’s really worrying for us.

And the real worry is the unknown:

The El Niño conditions have exacerbated warming off the US west coast that has persisted for most of the past year.
Scientists are attempting to work out what the potential long-term impact of these altered conditions will be.
“We are entering a really interesting period where the observations we make don’t have a precedent,” said Dr Terry Gosliner, senior curator of invertebrate zoology at the California Academy of Sciences.

There is no end, as we’re just a week-or-so into winter…’a really interesting period‘ to come, I suppose.
Meanwhile again, add this to the crazy mix (Discovery News):

A deep low pressure system in the North Atlantic is expected to reach maximum intensity off Iceland by Wednesday morning, battering that country with high winds and bringing yet more rain to the United Kingdom, which is already reeling from record floods.
Expected to be one of the strongest storms — if not the strongest — ever recorded in this area of the North Atlantic, it’s at least partly a continuation of the same low pressure system that helped spawn tornadoes in Dallas on Saturday.

A wildly-connected, weather-related world…

(Illustration out front: ‘Stormy Weather, Georgian Bay,’ by F.H. Varley, found here).