That's what I'm kind of thinking.. It takes a lot to sustain a pattern there, and they do often times flip, like in cycles. That could be the good part of this Winter, because a trough there for 7 years in a row just doesn't seem too likely. Land areas aren't sustained by water depth or anything like that. (I found it to have about a 54% chance to flip after a long, sustained pattern, although the flip was typically, for example, 2-3 days, after a 10-day stretch.)