Two studies point to a huge "warm blob" of water lurking off the U.S. West Coast that's apparently helping cause weirdly warm and dry weather in the West, and the weirdly wet and cold weather in the East.

Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington, began watching the blob a year and a half ago.

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"In the fall of 2013 and early 2014, we started to notice a big, almost circular mass of water that just didn't cool off as much as it usually did, so by spring of 2014 it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year," said Bond.

The patch of water off the West Coast is 2 degrees and 7 degrees warmer than normal. It's contributed to our mild winter and potential for a warmer summer. It runs about 1,000 miles in each direction and is 300 feet deep.

Bond says that although the blob doesn't seem to be caused by climate change, it has many of the same effects for West Coast weather. The weather pattern, popularly known as the North Pacific Model, is also what's causing the Pacific's warm blob.

The blob's influence also extends inland. As air passes over warmer water and reaches the coast it brings more heat and less snow, which the team's research paper shows helped cause current drought conditions in California, Oregon and Washington.

Though scientists are unsure how the blob came about, all models point to the blob remaining through the end of this year, possibly resulting in more tropical discoveries in the area.

The recent studies were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

TagsMysterious 'Warm Blob' of Water Causes Weird Weather Conditions, Weird Weather Conditions, warm blob of water, warm blob, global warming, North Pacific Model, weather