A rainy season that began with much El Niño-fueled promise is speeding to a dry and disappointing end. And now the blame game is beginning as weather experts try to figure out what went wrong — at least in Southern California.

This week, the National Weather Service posted a 17-minute video addressing the question of why the mysterious climate phenomenon marked by unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean didn’t deliver drenching rain to the region, as expected.