This spring in Japan has been pretty much a 180 from last spring. This year, cool, and lots of rain. Some parts of Japan are getting 250+ mm in 24 hours today and tomorrow.>

250mm is a lot of rain in any man's language. I seem to remember a few years ago southern areas of Japan had a severe meiyu season that caused floods and landslides.

Meanwhile the system here is hanging around with the biggest rain to the north west of Brisbane. We've been spared anything serious here so far. It does appear to have weakened somewhat in the last 6 hrs - we'll se what happens overnight.

The talk is that the La Nina will continue into winter. There does seem to be masses of moisture around for any system to pick up.

On the other side of the world there's a severe drought in Ethiopia.

As discussed, La Nina is caused by trade winds, which are caused by differences between hot and cold air - i wonder if the Arctic melting contributes to that hot-cold dynamic?