A weather forecast release by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is calling for a wetter and cooler than normal winter (December through February) in much of the United States due to an El Nino weather pattern.

The next time you have to raise your umbrella against torrents of cold winter rain, you may have a remote weather phenomenon to thank that many may know by name as El Nino, but may not well understand.

The climatic event El Niño, literally “the Baby Jesus”, was given its name because it generally occurs at Christmas time along the Peruvian coasts. This expression of climatic variability, also called El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), results from a series of interactions between the atmosphere and the tropical ocean.

The frequency of intense hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean appears to be closely connected to long-term trends in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the West African monsoon, according to new research from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Geologists Jeff Donnelly and Jonathan Woodruff made that discovery while assembling the longest-ever record of hurricane strikes in the Atlantic basin.