John, I have noticed that all of the government agencies take a very lazy approach to la nina...especially with respect to longer lead times. Its always base-state, generic la nina climo....cold nw, warm SE, blah, blah. I understand that we don't have big blocking, so there is a risk, as Scott points out so diligently and incessantly, but I think they need to be a little more open minded with respect to these ENSO climo conceptualizations.