So, does our knowledge that an ENSO is occurring allow us to predict when and where things like winter mudslides will occur?
No, no more than we can with earthquakes. We can say their likelihood is greater, over a season, and if summer brush fires have occurred in a particular hilly location (making it more susceptible to mudslides), we can put out a danger alert and perhaps take measures to offset that probability of occurrence. Climate prediction is a game of likelihood, a way of rigging the coin toss so that our call comes up better than 50:50. But there are no guarantees. Nevertheless, once the event is underway and we have the observations to tell us how strong it is, we can then make some intelligent guesses about how it will develop, and based on past experience we can make some fairly good projections about impacts for the coming season. To whom those projections will prove useful will depend on where they live and what time of year it is. By the time the next big event comes around (10-15 years from now?) our advisories should be much better.
