Forecasters say El Niño hasn’t yet stood us up on a date and that the much-hyped set of storms — characterized by unusually warm temperatures in the equatorial Pacific that bring above-average rainfall — will hit Southern California hard soon, after teasing us with a few days of rain in early January.

 

“It’s not really gone away,” said Brett Albright, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego. “It’s still out there. It’s a temperature phenomenon, and it has a progressive effect on the atmosphere.”