One way to evaluate how well the observed winter precipitation pattern matched the typical El Niño pattern is to calculate an overall correlation "score" that describes how well the two patterns matched. A score of 1 means a perfect match, a score of 0 means no match at all, and a score of -1 means an inverse match, or a mirror image, such as you might expect to see during a La Niña winter. The plot above shows these correlation scores for all moderate-to-strong El Niños since 1950. Almost all moderate-to-strong Niños, including the winter of 2023/24, had a score well above zero, indicating that the actual winter precipitation pattern was a reasonably good match to the typical El Niño pattern. NOAA Climate.gov image, adapted from original by Nat Johnson.