Dealing with El Nino and other disasters.

• Position: Federal Emergency Management Agency's financial assistance to damaged areas

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had set aside $289 million as of April 1 to help pay for damages in 23 places officially declared disaster areas by the president during the recent El Nino winter.

Although many storms, floods, tornadoes and droughts hit states and territories from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts, FEMA officials claim this season was no worse than previous winters. Unfortunately, their figures do not cover the total damages and heartbreak caused by El Nino. FEMA's assistance is available only for presidentially declared disasters, not smaller disasters responded to individually by state and local governments. California and Florida - buffeted by storms, floods and tornadoes - each estimate damages of at least half a billion dollars since last fall.

El Nino - named for the Christ child - is a peculiar weather pattern (first recognized by Peruvian fishermen) in which unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean combines with changes in trade winds at the beginning of a calendar year. This disruption has important effects on the weather around the globe.

In normal years, trade winds blow west across the tropical Pacific, warming surface water and increasing rainfall over the warmest water. During El Nino, the trade winds relax, the entire ocean's surface temperature increases and productivity falls in eastern Pacific fisheries.

Rainfall follows the warm water eastward, causing flooding across the southern tier of the United States and Peru, while droughts occur in the Marshall Islands and Indonesia, and brush fires rage across Australia.

The altered circulation of atmospheric winds causes weather changes in regions far away from the tropical Pacific. El Nino leads to an increased number of cyclones in the eastern Pacific and a decrease in hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Most El Nino winters are mild over western Canada and part of the northern United States and wet over the southern United States from Texas to Florida.

Scientists do not know what causes this kind of weather pattern to develop, but it takes little to...