A returning patch of warm water in the Northern Pacific Ocean called "the blob" could spell wonky weather for the U.S. this winter. Or, that's what recent news reports suggest.
But as monstrous as its name sounds, "the blob" doesn't really have a major impact on the atmosphere and the weather beyond a couple hundred miles inland of the West Coast, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told Live Science.
In 2015, the blob was blamed for a dry spell in the West and for prompting endless snow on the East Coast. But this is a questionable and "overly simple narrative," said Mike Halpert, the deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center at NOAA. [Weirdo Weather: 7 Rare Weather Events]
The current "blob" in the Northeast Pacific is a result of a mega-high-pressure zone that took shape in the atmosphere above it. This higher-than-normal pressureover the Gulf of Alaska, which most likely formed as a fluke, sprinkled Alaska with a mild and warm autumn, free of major storms. The absence of heavy winds and drops in temperature heated up the North Pacific waters.
It wasn't the blob that created a high-pressure zone; it was the high-pressure zone that created the blob.
That being said, the blob itself can have some significant effects on the temperature along the West Coast, according to Nicholas Bond, the state climatologist for Washington and research scientist with the University of Washington and the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory at NOAA, who was the first to coin the term "blob."
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