In the months ahead, you'll be hearing a lot about El Nino. As I reported a few weeks ago, there are signs that a full-fledged El Nino - a warming of tropical waters in the Pacific - will develop sometime this summer or early fall. Many people associate El Nino only with damage from severe weather. Indeed, during the record-breaking El Nino of 1997-98, strong storms that were enhanced by those warm waters contributed to more than $1 billion in economic losses in California.

But if you consider a broader picture, the United States actually reaps substantial benefits during an El Nino. That's because El Nino tends to bring milder winters to much of the northern U.S. During the winter of 1997-98, consumers actually saved more than $6 billion from reduced demand for natural gas and heating oil. The milder winter also helped boost retail sales by more than $5 billion, and there were fewer winter-weather-related traffic accidents and transportation delays.

All told, economic benefits in the U.S. related to the last El Nino exceeded losses by about $15 billion. At least from that perspective, maybe we should be rooting for an El Nino.