In is generally recognized that the most important impact on society from large scale climate variability such as El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is manifest as changes in weather characteristics including extreme events. In this study, we describe the results of experiments in which a global atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) is run at weather resolving scales in order to examine the link between weather and various leading modes of large-scale climate variability including the Madden Julian Oscillation, the Pacific/North American pattern, ENSO, and long-term changes in SST. We focus on extreme winter storms over the United States and how they are impacted by ENSO and other extratropical modes of variability. We will also present some preliminary results from high resolution AGCM simulations of the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons.