The next time you have to raise your umbrella against blustery April showers, spare a thought for folks in the US, who have to deal with the effects of a remote weather phenomenon that many may know by name as El Niño, but whose influence has only recently been understood.

Siegfried Schubert and his colleagues at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center are studying the impact that El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events have on the most intense US winter storms.