The tails could be heavy, it's true. This could make my usual 1-in-1000 heuristic overly conservative. Let's go with that, heavy tails. The data shows we are at something between a 1-in40 and 1-in-20 deviation. Normally (pun intended) that's ~2-sigma deviation. So... I guess it doesn't really seem like an epoch defining El Niño.