The Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) has become the de-facto standard that NOAA uses for identifying El Niño (warm) and La Niña (cool) events in the tropical Pacific. It is the seasonnal SST anomaly for the Niño 3 and the Nino 3.4 region (i.e., 5oN-5oS, 120o-170oW). Events are defined above the +0.5o anomaly for warm (El Niño) events and at or below the -0.5 anomaly for cold (La Niña) events. The threshold is further broken down into Weak (with a 0.5 to 0.9 SST anomaly), Moderate (1.0 to 1.4) and Strong (≥ 1.5) events. For the purpose of this report for an event to be categorized as weak, moderate or strong it must have equaled.