Sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean may depart from some mathematical average condition, but the departure is not necessarily abnormal. A decade or two without an El Ni o would be truly unusual. El Ni o is part of a cycle. El Ni o gets all of the attention, not only from the media but from researchers as well. But El Ni o is the warm phase of a cycle that also includes a cold phase, often referred to as La Nina.
Researchers have yet to focus much of their attention on the cold part of the cycle.
There has been less interest in La Nina over the past two decades because there have been fewer cold events than warm ones. However, extreme weather events around the globe are associated with La Nina. For example, in Southern Africa, drought usually accompanies El Ni o, while flooding is associated with La Nina 3. El Ni o does not cause all contemporaneous weather anomalies. And even those areas are not necessarily influenced in the same way by different El Ni o events.