It does NOT need to be an El Niño year for there to be big storms in the Bay Area. Using the Bay Area Storm Index ( [https://ggweather.com/basi.htm](https://ggweather.com/basi.htm) ) as a metric, only 4 of the 17 biggest events (i.e., BASI ≥ 9.0 ) occured during El Niño; with 7 during La Niña and 6 during Neutral years.