With acknowledgement that you should never fool yourself into believing you're smarter than you are, the weather has played out roughly in line with the guiding view I laid out.
While the globe is hot, the ENSO, SSTs, sunspot cycles, soil moisture didn't seem to be screaming that the odds of a big hot/dry event were high.
So far pretty much how it has played out around most of the world- more too wet problems than too dry and those generally aren't a huge deal overall.
The other factor to throw in there is the situation where warm temperatures are resulting in more ocean evaporation. The weather models, which are based on a huge number or inputs, are still mostly based on recent history. This time around they were pretty consistently too hot and too dry, whatever the reason.
As la nina looks to occur in a benign timeframe* at least for the US, I'm generally sticking with the same view until something compelling changes- possibly pretty good crops globally for a number of years.
Could be that wet springs will be the biggest US challenge, as they've been the last three years, but so far 3 successive corn yields above all previous, probably.
*doesn't seem to be a strong la nina effect from a Dec-Feb event in SA.
