Frigid in Asia, Siberia, But Don't Get Smug: It's Coming Here To North America

Tokyo just got its biggest snowstorm in four years and its
sharpest cold wave in 40 years. 

It's been kind of on the warm side as a whole in most of the United States and southern Canada for the past couple of weeks.

There's been cold snaps, yes, but it has been nothing extreme.

The world's coldest weather has been on the other side of the globe, and it's been nasty. One town in Siberia got down to 80 below a few days ago.

Tokyo, Japan had nine inches of snow on Monday, the most in four years. It also got down to 25 degrees in Tokyo, which by Vermont standards isn't bad, but it was Tokyo's coldest temperature since 1970. It's forecast to stay cold in Japan through today.

But, the weather pattern is changing. The polar vortex, that normal pool of very cold air that usually stays in or near the Arctic, was positioned in the eastern hemisphere recently. It's about to move to the western hemisphere, and take up a position in northern or even central Canada.

Refresher course: Despite the panic over the polar vortex, which became a buzzword in the winter of 2014, the vortex is perfectly normal, and it's perfectly normal for it to shift positions like I described in the paragraph above. And it has always existed. It's not anything new.

Still, this expected shift of the polar vortex to northern Canada means the doors will open for frigid weather in southern Canada and large chunks of the United States. It's a little tough to judge where the worst of the cold air will be in a week or two, but for now it looks like it will be concentrated most in the northern Great Plains.

We on the East Coast look to be fairly near the eastern edge of this cold blob. Again, it's too hard to get into speciics a week or so out, but if this forecast holds, it looks like we'll get cold blasts, but not to the intensity the Great Plains will feel.

This pattern would also favor a lot of storminess in the eastern United States, but again, it's too soon to tease out the details. I do know there's nothing major planned in the storm department in most of New England for the next several days. However, an offshore nor'easter might brush eastern New England with snow around Tuesday.

This pattern change has implications for the Arctic, too, especially in and near Alaska. Alaska had its warmest December on record, and January started off very warm, too. They finally got a blast of deep subzero cold in the past week or so. However, this pattern change is going to warm them right back up again.

That's not good, because sea ice up there is already near record lows, and this warm spell will interfere with the normal expansion and thickening of ice you get in the Arctic this time of year.