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Australia typically experiences drought during El Niño, especially across the eastern two-thirds of the continent during austral spring (September–November). There have, however, been some interesting departures from this paradigm. For instance, the near-record-strength El Niño of 1997 was associated with near-normal rainfall. In contrast, eastern Australia experienced near-record drought during the modest El Niño of 2002. This stark contrast raises the issue of how the magnitude of the drought is related to the character and magnitude of El Niño, for instance as measured by the broadscale sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly in the equatorial eastern Pacific. Internal (unpredictable) atmospheric noise is one plausible explanation for this contrasting behavior during these El Niño events. Here, the authors suggest that Australian rainfall is sensitive to the zonal distribution of SST anomalies during El …