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This, too, is warmer-than-usual surface water, but it is much farther north than El Niño, which forms near South America.

The Blob “is an area showing warmer than normal out west of British Columbia, the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Strait.”

Paradoxically, it can make us very cold.

The Blob forms when an area of high pressure in the atmosphere forms and stays where it is, Phillips said. The last one formed in late 2013 and lasted into 2015.

A Pacific Blob makes British Columbia warmer in winter.

But this high pressure brings in air from the south, “and what goes up must come down,” Phillips said. “So all that southerly air moves upwards into British Columbia, and then on the other side of it (i.e. to the east), the Arctic air plunges down.

“So the West is enjoying the warmth and the sunshine and the East is freezing in the dark.

“That’s what we saw in 2013 and into 2014 in Ottawa, for example … In Ontario and Quebec, it was really friggin’ cold.”

Photo by Tony Caldwell / Postmedia Network

Ottawa had 35 days when the temperature fell below -20 C in early 2014. The average is 16 such days. The average temperature overall that winter was 2.5 degrees below normal.

That was also the winter when the polar vortex — an area of icy air that usually stays in the Arctic — was forced down over central Canada and the northern United States.

The winter of 2015 was even a little colder. More Blob.

“That Blob can disappear. All you have to do is get a little storm activity and move it about and circulate the water,” Phillips said.

He is still expecting that El Niño will warm our air a little bit.

However: “I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on it because of that Blob. It’s like weather wars out there. One is going to beat up the other. If El Niño weakens and the Blob stays its course, the polar vortex might be the operative words in central Canada.

“There is that possibility.”

tspears@postmedia.com

twitter.com/TomSpears1

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