Don't Freak Out But Environment Canada Says This May Be The Year Winter Is Cancelled

And we have the "blob" and El Niño to thank.

Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips told the Edmonton Journal that we may be in for a very mild winter in 2015. In fact, he said, "it may be the year winter is cancelled." WHAT?

CBC / Via cbc.ca

Two factors contributed to his statement, neither of which are alcohol. The first is that the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology confirmed that they are seeing El Niño weather thresholds in the Pacific for the first time in five years.

Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology / Via bom.gov.au

This chart shows that May 2015 has met the threshold set by the Australian government required to declare that El Niño is in effect.

The second is something called the "blob." The Journal described it as "a mass of warm water in the Pacific Ocean that originated in the Gulf of Alaska earlier this year and moved down to the coast of British Columbia."

Fairview Productions / Via youtube.com

Of course, different parts of Canada experience very different winters. Nobody is canceling winter on Baffin Island.

Dc Productions / Getty Images

Phillips, however, did tell The Huffington Post Canada that he's confident "this winter will be warmer than the last two winters."

That's encouraging, but to put it into perspective, we just suffered through the second-coldest back-to-back winters in nearly 70 years.