In The Blob, a 1958 horror movie, a gelatinous people-eating alien terrified  a small town as it devoured residents and grew bigger, redder and more voracious. The film became a drive-in favorite and a  sci-fi cult classic. More than half a century later the entire West Coast of North America faced a very real and even more dangerous Blob. In the winter of 2013/2014  a “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” of high pressure, as meteorologists described it, clamped over the north Pacific like a lid, stalling winds and blocking storms.  Warmer-than-normal waters spread,  eventually covering about 3.5 million square miles from Alaska to Mexico—an area larger than the contiguous United States.