Only a few months ago, El Nino was starting to look like the most overhyped story of the decade. The periodic warming of Pacific Ocean waters that plays havoc with the world's weather was supposed to be the El Nino of the century--worse even than the great El Nino of 1982-83, which left thousands dead and caused $13 billion in property damage. By last fall, however, El Nino had wreaked only piddling levels of destruction in the U.S., and the public was beginning to see it less as an impending apocalypse than as a gimmick to sell 4-by-4s and generate guaranteed...