Quite a bit of confidence in it this time around

El Nińo 2015: Largest ever?

Here's a good article summarising the confidence forecasters now have that 2015 will have a strong El Nino.  And the consequences include possible heavy rain for Southern California, which would be good for dried up reservoirs, but may not end longer term drought:

 For those hoping for an end to the drought, multi-year rainfall deficits in California are now so huge that even a very wet year likely wouldn’t erase them. What’s more, heavy El Niño rainstorms frequently come to California via tropical atmospheric river events,
also known as the Pineapple Express. While those rains can help fill dwindling reservoirs, they’re often too warm to produce significant snowpack in the mountains—which is crucial for agricultural needs during the following summer.

So remember that for later in the year when Andrew Bolt claims that climatologists were wrong about the California drought.

I wonder if the heavy rain that it usually brings to parts of South America can reach over to the other side of the continent too, to help drought ravaged Sao Paulo?  (Speaking of which,  I see that an area close to that city has a terrible crime problem.  I kind of assumed it was a safer place than that.  And this article is an interesting take on the drought:
São Paulo water crisis shows the failure of public-private partnerships.