A woman watches the sunset over the Pacific Ocean at La Jolla's Windansea Beach during a summer heat wave on August 24, in San Diego, California. Kevin Carter/Getty Images

A marine heat wave spanning much of the North Pacific Ocean is already influencing the weather in North America and is poised to make its mark on winter.

The unusually warm ocean water, coined “the blob” due to how it appears on weather maps, has brought milder and more humid air to the West Coast in recent weeks, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

This has led to unusual thunderstorms in coastal California and may be helping to limit the severity of the late summer and early fall wildfire season, at least for now.

What is clear to meteorologists is that the

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