The variations in sea-surface temperature for each year demonstrated in figures 4-10 were likely to have been occurring during a period of diverging temperatures. As observed each year seemed to have a pattern stranding occurring at the divergence of the temperature lines. The blue pixel line in the temperature graph has a pattern of ending up above the other two lines for each year. There also seemed to be no relationship with sea height and stranding.

In comparison with year 1977, Mountain did a study of oceanographic conditions in subareas 5 and 6 during the years of 1970-79. In his paper he analyzed SST and near-bottom temperatures between Cape Hatteras and the Gulf of Maine. It was suggested that in years 1977-78 there was a cooling that resulted from wintertime negative anomalies. Large negative values were shown in the winter and spring of Georges Bank and Middle Atlantic Bight. In his paper Table 1 showed average SST anomalies by season and the Mid-Atlantic Bight showed the smallest winter temperatures (-0.65°C) between Jan-Mar, which suggested that the later years of the 1970-79 period had extremely cold winters.