Jim, Yes, the usual historical observation for El Nino is lots of warm water off the coast of Peru and Equador. This causes a collapse in the local sardine fishery as the warm water holds less nutrients. That behavior in fact was how the original El Nino was characterized and why it got a Spanish name.

Now it may be occurring to a greater extent in California. If this had happened earlier in the historical record, instead of "El Nino" it would have been called "The Dude". :)

As far as the possibility of two dipoles, separating out the effects will have to wait. There is no use for me to get ahead of the analysis. Before I start adding new solutions to the mix I have to get acceptance for the general approach. It is a judgement call, but at some point you have to step back and present the salient factor without extra layers of modeling. I wanted to at least acknowledge the potential of two dipoles interacting just to show that we know that difficulties may still exist.