It’s back!
Granted, some say it never went away. Responsible for record warmth from late 2013 through the summer of 2015, the Blob weakened considerably when one of the strongest El Ninos on record sent a barrage of storms through the Pacific Northwest, giving many locations their wettest winter on record and churning up the abnormally warm water in the Northeast Pacific. Although warmer-than-normal water stuck around the Pacific Coast throughout 2016, the water was not exorbitantly warm, as it had been in 2014 and 2015.
But in August, an amorphous, amoebic mass of warm water once again started building in the Eastern Pacific, growing to terrifying strength into September. With water temperatures up to 4 degrees Celsius above normal, it is more clear now than ever. The Blob is back, and it is back with a vengeance.
Take a look at this JavaScript loop below of global SST for the last year. Although the Northeast Pacific has more often than not been warmer than normal, the “Blob” truly only reformed once we entered August. Several thousand miles away, our strong El Nino died earlier this year and attempted to transition to a weak La Nina, but returned to “La Nada” (Neutral) conditions over the late summer. Accordingly, NOAA has cancelled their La Nina Watch, which I’ll talk about in the future blog. A good rule of thumb for blogging is to stick to one region of anomalous sea-surface temperatures per post.
Blobs like the one above are created when persistent ridges of high pressure prevent vertical mixing of the ocean, allowing water near the surface to warm as it absorbs the sun’s rays. As the picture below shows, a persistent ridge of high pressure stuck over the NE Pacific for August. It’s no wonder that the Blob has sprung back to life!
Current models suggest that the Blob could stick around through the winter and perhaps move east towards our coast, as it did during the winter of 2014 to 2015. With such warm water offshore and the potential for it to inch closer as winter goes on, expect an above-average chance warmer-than-normal temperatures this winter. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center is calling for a very warm next three months throughout the majority of the nation, and while I do not know how much of this is due to the resurgence of the Blob, you can bet that the Blob is at least a contributing factor, particularly for the Pacific Northwest.
Neutral years are the hardest years to make seasonal forecasts for. We could have a warm winter with hardly any snow just like we did during 2014-2015, or we could have a vicious winter with windstorms, floods, and maybe even a good lowland snow storm. Whatever the weather will be, you can bet that I’ll be doing my due diligence to keep you all prepared.
Thanks for reading!