Late for Work? Burned Supper? Blame El Nino

You think you’re sick of El Nino? Try being a weather forecaster.

Even as the first rain of the year pummeled the California coast, some meteorologists are muttering that the nationwide El Nino hype is making it hard for them to do their job.

“You can’t really blame every individual event on El Nino,” said John Sherwin, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. “We are trying to forecast the best we can, but when things don’t happen, it makes all meteorologists look like a bunch of flakes.”

Sherwin says the El Nino publicity blitz has only confused the public.

“The meaning of El Nino has gotten twisted,” he said. “People view storms as El Nino, but it’s not El Nino that is causing storms. It’s a combination of the atmosphere and the ocean working together. But El Nino has transcended its whole meaning. It’s become a buzzword. I mean look, Dan Rather is doing El Nino updates every day.”

In fact, his colleague, Michael R. Smith, a certified consulting meteorologist, said the only things that can be attributed to El Nino are hurricanes unusually far north in the east Pacific, and unseasonably large weather events.

But that has not stopped Californians--and Americans--from whipping themselves into an El Nino frenzy.

Michael Halpert, a meteorologist and El Nino expert at the National Center for Environmental Prediction in Maryland, said the hype at times borders on the absurd. Last week, he said, he got a flurry of phone calls asking if the freak snowfall in Denver was El Nino-related.

“You just kind of shake your head and ask, ‘Are they going to relate everything to El Nino?’ ” he said.

“Unfortunately, there are people out there who will blame everything on El Nino.”