SEATTLE - It showed up over the winter of 2013/2014 - a massive blob of unusually warm water in the northeastern Pacific Ocean west of Washington and south of Alaska.
The blob is about four to five degrees Fahrenheit warmer than what the Pacific is typically, and that's influencing our weather on land.
Nick Bond with the University of Washington's Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean says the blob is to blame when it comes to last year's warmer than normal summer, and this winter's unusually warm temperatures and record low snowpack. He's just completed a paper published by the American Geophysical Union.
But there's a problem. The blob has grown, and now stretches along the West Coast from Alaska down along the Mexican coast. The blob is separate from El Nino, which is the warming of the equatorial waters of the Pacific Ocean.
