"Polar Vortex" And Climate Change: Are They Related? Well.....It's Complicated

Someone in Chicago lifted this pasta with a fork in this week's
subzero cold and it froze that way. 

The big cold wave that hit the Midwest this past week has faded fast, and there's a brief spell of spring-ish weather coming to much of the nation.

Practically everybody called the cold wave the "polar vortex," but of course as I explained the other day, it was just a piece of the polar vortex way up north breaking off and that helped to send frigid air to the States.

As noted, as cold waves go, this was a powerful, if brief one. There might have been an Illinois state record for lowet temperaeture set, and a few cities like Rockford and Moline, Illinois and Cedar Rapids, Iowa set all-time record low temperatures.

There are a few clowns out there telling the gullible that the cold wave means climate change is a hoax. Ever notice we're told that every time it gets chilly, but whenever there's record heat, they shut their mouths?

You have to keep repeating: A cold wave in one corner of the world does not disprove climate change, and a hot spell in another little corner of the world doesn't prove it exists.

We look at longer term trends and other factors instead. Here's one possible indication:

It's true that a lot of record low temperatures were set in the past week. But if you look at the past 365 days, almost twice as many daily record highs were set as daily record lows. That's a trend, folks.

You might also have heard some news reports that suggest the record cold this week in the Midwest might partly have been actually caused by global warming. An Associated Press article on January 28 was headlined: "Science Says: Get Used to Polar Vortex Outbreaks."

Well, maybe.

I've covered the issue of how cold snaps might be related to climate change, but now's a good time to review.  The polar vortex is a circle of very cold air that meanders around the Arctic. It's usually trapped somewhere up there by jet stream winds.

This cold outbreak was triggered in part by something called a Sudden Stratospheric Warming. The stratosphere is a layer of the atmosphere high above us, around six to 30 miles above ground.

A schematic from the Weather Channel. The Sudden Stratospheric Warming
over the North Pole splits the Polar Vortex into two or more pieces. 

When there is a Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW for short) over the Arctic, it can split up the polar vortex.  Then, pieces of the vortex break off and end up in Siberia, northern Asia,  Europe or southern Canada and the United States.  

There was an SSW earlier this month, which helps explain why this brutal piece of the the polar vortex made places like Minneapolis, Des Moines and Chicago so miserable.

I have to stop here and offer a caveat: The fact is scientists are sure global warming is occurring and it's causing all kinds of problems, notwithstanding what our President Trump says. He claims his own "high level of intelligence" to explain his view that climate scientists are all wrong. 

Whatevs.

However, there is not yet scientific consensus on what I'm about to describe. The pieces of the puzzle seem to be coming together, but what I will offer is NOT proof that this is global warming in action.

Some scientist think that climate change might be making SSW's more common. That means the polar vortex, usually locked up somewhere near the North Pole, will more frequently break apart, sending shards of itself over the places in the mid-latitudes and giving places like Madison, Wisconsin or Burlington, Vermont more frequent wicked bad winter cold spells.

On top of that, the Arctic is warming faster than the midlatitudes and tropics. This reduced temperature contrast could make the jet stream weaker. A weaker jet stream tends to have bigger northward bulges and southward plunges.

Those southward plunges here in the Northern Hemisphere are cold waves. Also, this slower jet stream, and these bigger bulges and plunges might make SSW's more likely, according climate scientist.

At the risk of getting into the technical weeds here, let's allow Robert Fanney, aka Robert Scribbler to explain this:

The slower jet stream "results in the collapse of the column of  upper level air held aloft by the (Polar) Vortex's winds. When the air collapses, it compresses, causing the stratosphere to warm. The falling column of warm air then can end up acting like an atmospheric wedge - driving the Polar Vortex apart and causing it to split."

The end result might be we could now be just entering a future in which it's generally hotter most of the time than it used to. But this general warmth would be punctuated by periods of intense winter cold, like the Midwest experienced in the past week.

This winter could be a glimpse of that scenario. There have been periods of record warmth in parts of the country interspersed with punishing cold snaps.  We always have periods of record warmth and chill, but the contrast between the two extremes might be getting, well, more extreme.

As noted above, not all climate scientists agree with what I've just described. The atmosphere is incredibly complex, and there's so many things going on up there that it's hard to tease out what might be affected by climate change, and to what extent.

Some scientists say climate change is making Sudden Stratospheric Warming events more frequent, while other equally credible scientists say this is hogwash.

That's the thing. The science of climate change is settled, but a lot of the picky details of what it will do are not. Which sows public confusion. Well, if the science is settled, why don't we know what's going to happen.

Think of the current state of climate science as a house under construction. The frame and roof and the walls and such are up, so we know what the shape of the house is going to be. Like climate science, the basics of the house are established.

The house isn't done, though. We don't know what color it's going to be, how they will furnish the interior rooms or what the landscaping will look like.  Like the work of climate scientists, the picky details of what the house will become are still uncertain.

It's possible the departing cold snap in the Midwest is just another normal aspect of what we fondly or not-so-fondly call "winter." Besides, as I said at the start of this post, one weather event on one spot of the globe does pretty much nothing to prove or disprove climate change. You have to look at long term trends all over the Earth.

I know damn well I will get blowback from the climate change deniers and skeptics for this piece, as I always do when I say something factual like "climate change exists."

I'm always stunned by the vehemence of some of these deniers. Maybe they doth protest too much?

It's Not The "Polar Vortex" It's The Yo-Yo Extremes That Wow Me This Winter

Someone flash froze these pants in air that was 20s below
and left them outside to mark the occasion
Uof the worst cold snap in a generation. 

UPDATE: 2 p.m. EST Wednesday.

I'm seeing more reports of some pretty impressive new cold weather records today out in the Midwest.

It looks like there's a new all-time record low temperature for the entire state of Illinois. It reportedly got down to 38 below in Mt. Carroll, Illinois today.

They're going to inspect the Mt Carroll equipment to make sure it's accurate. If it is, that 38 below would break the previous statewide Illinois record low of 36 below in Congerville, set on January 5, 1999.

Moline, Illinois dropped down to 33 below. That broke the city's all-time record low by six degrees. It's very rare to break an all-time record low, but to exceed it by six degrees is absolutely incredible.

We have an update from Rockford, Illinois, which had an all-time record low of 31 below, not 30 below as previously reported. Cedar Rapids, Iowa was at 30 below, a new all-time record for them.

In Michigan, MLive reports some strange things going on inside houses there, and I'm sure this is happening elsewhere. People report frozen water in toilets, ice on indoor electrical outlets, curtains frozen to sliding glass doors and the interior of doors covered in frost.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

Yes, yes, I know the cold snap in the Midwest is a memorable, record-breaking weather event.

But what's got me fascinated is not so much the cold wave but the one-extreme-to-another character of this winter. Which actually is a continuation of what we've increasingly seen in this nation and worldwide in recent years and decades.

I had to mention the "Polar Vortex" in the headline of this post because that's all everybody is talking about in relation to this cold snap.  To review, the polar vortex is a normal component of the Arctic winter.

Pieces of the polar vortex sometimes break off and head south. That's also completely normal. Occasionally, these pieces head south into the United States. That's what happened this time.
Again: Normal.

It's just that the particular piece that broke off in recent days and roared south from northern Canada  brought with it air that was even chillier than usual.

And since this piece of the polar vortex raced southward faster than usual, it didn't have time to warm up on its trip south.  That's why the Midwest is seeing record cold.  So there, I've got that out of the way.

The cold is impressive. Cotton, Minnesota reportedly got down to 56 below this morning, which is within four degrees of Minnesota's all time state record for cold. Rockford, Illinois was down to 30 below, that city's coldest reading in history.

Up in International Falls, Minnesota, it was 45 below this morning after a "high" temperature of 19 below on Tuesday.

The Midwest, and eventually us here in Vermont are about to see a spectacular warm up.  In some places, it is said it will warm up at a record pace, whatever that is.  Davenport, Iowa, which was at 27 below this morning, is expecting a high temperaure Sunday of 48 degrees, which is a 75 degree jump.

International Falls, Minnesota is expected to reach 26 degrees Sunday, 71 degrees hotter than it was this morning.

Here in Vermont, the change won't be as extreme. But subzero readings Friday morning will be replaced by highs in the 40s by early next week.

A heavy snow squall in St. Albans, Vermont Wednesday. The
squalls contributed to one of the snowiest Januaries on
record in Burlington, Vermont. 

Speaking of extremes, those snow squalls yesterday covered an amazingly wide area of the Northeast, stretching from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts and Maine.

Some of the squalls caused serious highway pileups in Pennsylvania and New York.  The snow squall that hit my place was one of the most intense I can remember, though, like most snow squalls it was very brief.

The snow squalls added another installment to the month's snow total in Burlington, Vermont. The city has had 41.3 inches of snow this month, making this the third snowiest January on record. You'd never know it, because repeated thaws in this yo-yo winter have cut back on the amount of snow on the ground.  

Caribou, Maine has had 59.8 inches of snow this month, its snowiest January on record.  Meanwhile, Boston, Massachusetts has had only 2.3 inches of snow this winter, which is 20.5 inches below normal.

When I tweeted out Burlington's snow total this morning, Tim Kelley, a meteorologist with NBC10 in Boston and NECN, responded with this very true reply which read in part:

"'Normal' weather does not exist. It's a balance of extremes. Always has been, always will be."

The contrast between snowfall in northern and southern New England is a great example of that. So are the monthly average temperatures in the Midwest for January. Despite the record cold, Minneapolis will have a January, 2019 that will be only about a degree cooler than average. They had a warm start to the month.

In other words, January temperatures in Minneapolis will be  close to "normal."

The sticky question arises when you question whether the extremes that lead to these "normals" are getting more extreme. Climate scientists say they are. To me, judging whether the climate is more extreme than it used to be is sometimes hard to do.

Yes, there are more record highs than record lows lately, even though this week in the United States is chilly. You can measure that. There's evidence that floods, droughts and such are getting worse.

But the causes of months like January in the United States are hard to tease out. How much was due to just the usual randomness of the atmosphere? Did climate change influence any of this, and if so, by how much?

I don't know. The climate scientists will keep studying this. Meanwhile, we just keep bracing ourselves for our roller coaster weather ride, and hope this roller coaster doesn't totally derail.

That Arctic Blast Everybody's Talking About And What It Means For Us

Do you like cold weather? Head to Minnesota. These were temperatures
there this morning. Expect this and worse in Minnesota and the
rest of the Midwest most of this week.

The big Arctic blast that everybody's been hyping in the Midwest seems to have started kind of before it began.

An initial surge of bitter air settled over an area centered around northern and central Minnesota - and  surrounding areas - this morning, setting some awfully nasty record low temperatures in the process.

Meanwhile, the main surge of Arctic air should surge across the Canadian border tomorrow. For parts of the western Great Lakes and Midwest, this will be the most intense cold wave in at least a few years.

It won't be the worst ever, contrary to what some clickbait types are telling us, but it will be impressive.

For us here in Vermont, we'll have our share of bitter air with this, but it won't be as bad as our friends to the west are experiencing. I'll get into how Vermont fares in a bit.

First, we go west. Checking the weather in International Falls, Minnesota early this morning, their conditions were dense freezing fog, with a temperature of 45 below. That's not the wind chill. That's the actual temperature.

That 45 below was a new record for the date, beating 36 below in 1966. It was a record 40 below in Hibbing, Minnesota and 47 below in Ava, Minnesota.  They can keep that.

On Saturday, it was 23 below in Madison, Wisconsin, colder than any reporting station in Alaska. (It's a bit on the warm side for this time of year in much of Alaska.

It will get worse out there in the Midwest. The temperatures probably won't go that low again this upcoming week, but the wind chills with the  main Arctic outbreak this week will be ridiculous.

Low temperatures this week in cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Des Moines and Detroit could easily fall to levels not seen since the 1990s. Minneapolis could get well into the minus 20s. Chicago might flirt with 20 below, too.

Of course, cold snaps of this magnitude used to be more common, but have gotten more rare with global warming.

As dangerous as this cold wave will be for the center of the nation - and it is a dangerous cold wave - it won't last nearly as long as some of past historic cold waves, like those in the 1930s and to a lesser extent those in the 1970s.

By next weekend, temperatures in the Midwest will be rebounding to levels that are chilly, but nothing out of the ordinary for early February.

I also want to add a hype alert: You will see it in the headlines all week, "OMG!! Polar Vortex Invades US! We're all DOOOMMMED!!!!!!!!!!!

Um, no. Pieces of the Arctic polar vortex do break off and head south from time to time, occasionally reaching the United States. That's what's happening this week, and it's not that weird. Although the intensity of the cold will be worse than usual, it's not unprecedented.

During a similar weather pattern in 1996, the temperature fell to as low as minus 60 in northern Minnesota. It won't get that cold this time.

VERMONT EFFECTS

We in the Green Mountain State will certainly feel the effects of this Arctic blast, but it won't be as bad as it's likely to be in the Midwest.

The Arctic air is coming almost due south from the northern reaches of Canada straight down into the northern Plains and western Great Lakes. It will move fast and  not have a chance to warm up even a smidge by the time it hits the United States. That's why places like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois are going to be hit so hard with this.

From there, the Arctic air will head east, across the Great Lakes toward us. The comparatively warm waters of the lakes will modify the air a little bit. Also, once the bitter blast gets as far south as the United States, it will be exposed to more sunshine than areas in northern Canada. That will take a little bit of the punch out of the chill as well.

That said, it won't be a picnic here in Vermont. This cold wave will probably be on par with the one we had last Monday. That means from Wednesday into next weekend, we'll have subzero nights and early mornings, and high temperatures in the single number and teens, which is definitely a lot colder than normal.

Wind chills will be brutal, too, especially Wednesday and Thursday. This won't be the worst cold wave ever in Vermont - not by a long shot. But it will be unpleasant, that's for sure.

Before we get to the chill, we have some more snow to talk about. As of mid-morning today, Sunday, January 27, there are already snow showers and blowing snow around Vermont amid gusty south winds.

Those south winds are bringing a bite to otherwise relatively mild air that will take us to near 30 this afternoon.

The big news today is something that on radar looks like one of those summer time thundery, gusty squall lines heading toward us. In today's case, that's a line of snow squalls that seem destined to come through Vermont during early to mid afternoon.

This line of squalls will hit some areas harder than others, but a lot of us face the prospect of a brief period of very heavy snow, terrible visibility on the roads, which will suddenly become slick, and some relatively strong gusty winds.

Snow accumulations today will only amount to one to three inches, but in many places those snow squalls will be a danger.

Monday, a modified piece of that Arctic air from Minnesota will be here, giving us a chilly day. Tuesday will warm up to near 30 degrees ahead of that main cold front. A complex storm along this front at this point looks like it could give us a few to several inches of snow.

Then the Arctic blast hits. Enjoy the ride!

Polar Vortex Is Back In The News. Don't Panic, But It Could Cause Something Called "Winter"

Schematic of how something called Sudden Stratospheric Warming
can split up the Polar Vortex and send those cold pieces closer
to Europe and the United States, increasing the risk
of harsh winter weather. 

Some of you might remember the media hype back in the winters of 2014 and 2015 about the "Polar Vortex."

At the time it was hyped as some new-fangled thing unleashing supposedly apocalyptic winter despair on the nation, or something like that.  

Well, the hype is back, at least sort of. The polar vortex, or at least a particular orientation of it threatens us again. It could cause us to experience something called "winter."

The short version of this things are changing in the atmosphere, as they often do in the winter, in a way that could bring some sharp cold spells and maybe some good sized snowstorms to parts of the middle and eastern parts of the United States.

Let's explain: As non-insane people explained in the winter of 2014, the polar vortex is something that's totally, absolutely normal.  It's pretty much always there, spinning high overhead in the Arctic.

It's basically a circle of strong winds spinning around  a blob of particularly cold air up north.

Sometimes the polar vortex moves a little south, sometimes toward Europe, sometimes down into central or eastern Canada. When that happens, the cold air on the ground moves south, too.

If the polar vortex approaches Europe, it gets really cold there. If the polar vortex gets south into Canada, chances are there will be some subzero cold in the United States. Plus, depending upon how the polar vortex orients itself, some areas get decent snowstorms.

Now, I'm going to introduce another so-called villain that is getting a lot of hype this particular winter. 

It's called Sudden Stratospheric Warming. Again, it sounds terribly frightening to most people, because they've never heard of it before and it sounds like something has gone off the rails.

Well, no. Sometimes, very high in the atmosphere over the Arctic, above where most weather systems live, the air quickly gets unusually warm. Again, scientists have long known about this, and it's not like the world is going to end in 15 minutes.

Weather geeks have been going bananas since at least early December over this winter's Sudden Stratosphere Warming when forecasts first indicated it might happen and then it unfolded. Until now, I've spared you this esoteric excitement because it had absolutely zero effect on your life.

But now it looks like we're approaching the time when you might, just might, feel the effects of this thing, which we'll call SSW for short. Trust me, you're not going die.

In the weeks after an SSW develops, its effects begin to trickle down to near the Earth's surface and begins to affect the weather we experience.

The SSW very often moves the polar vortex southward, or splits it up into two or three mini-polar vortexes. That's what is happening this winter. It looks like the Northern Hemisphere is temporarily home to three of these mini-polar, um, vortexes? vortices?  

These little baby vortices  also drift south, opening the door for Arctic outbreaks to hit the mid-latitudes. That's why central and parts of southern Europe have experienced so much snow and cold over the past couple of weeks.

Another "mini polar vortex" of sorts seems to be setting up in Canada. Though this is not definite, it looks likely that this might set the eastern and central United States up for some Arctic cold for the end of January and into February.

We might already be starting to see the effects of all this. We managed to get a typical cold wave on us this weekend, and another brief one will be upon us around Thursday. Things look like they will become more active and stormy within about a week or so, but nobody yet has any idea how stormy.

Long range forecasts after that indicate repeated influxes of Arctic air and a risk of some snowstorms through the beginning of February.  This somewhat more exciting weather pattern should be established within a week here in the Northeast.

There's no telling how extreme things will get. Yes, it'll be winter. So you have to expect these spells  of Arctic cold and snowy weather.  There's also a chance that other atmospheric conditions, like a strong west-to-east jet stream coming across the Pacific Ocean into North America, could thwart many of the invasions of Arctic air from the North Pole.

On some occasions, the weather following a SSW can get awfully extreme, worse than your standard winter conditions.

That was the case in 2015, when Boston had an unprecedented snow siege. The city had 94 inches of snow in just 30 days in late January and February that year. February, 2015 in Burlington, Vermont was the third coldest on record.  I've gotten wimpy in my old age, so I'm hoping we don't get a repeat of 2015.

Last year, harsh weather after an SSW blasted much of Europe, and contributed to frigid, snowy conditions in much of the United States through March. That snowy chill lingered well into April, especially in the northern and central Plains.

If the current aftermath of a SSW brings cold, snowy weather to New England or elsewhere in the United States, it's really not possible right now to tell how long it would last or how intense it will get.  It could be just a couple weeks of rough weather. Or, worse case scenario, a couple months.

Scientists are investigating whether SSW's would become more frequent because of climate change. Some preliminary evidence suggests this is the case. Which would bring many of us in Europe and the eastern half of the United States a strange irony:

Conditions would warm up as years and decades go by, but we'd still be at risk of occasionally getting some of the harshest possible long spells of Arctic winter weather.

Extreme Weather Pattern Is About To Create Lots Of Extreme Weather

As of Sunday afternoon, the map on the home
page of the National Weather Service was lit up
with lots of colors. That signifies lots of weather
watches, warnings and alerts, meaning there will
be a lot to talk about in the weather over the coming days.
The dark green you see in Vermont is a flood watch.

The jet stream and the weather is going haywire again, which means we here in Vermont, and a lot of people throughout Earth's Northern Hemisphere are going to have plenty of extreme and bizarre weather over the next week or so.

THE PATTERN:

The polar vortex, that whirlpool of very cold air that pretty much always wanders around the Arctic, or at least near it, all the time has split into two pieces. That's rare, but it does happen occasionally.

One piece is ending up roughly over central and northwestern Canada, while the other piece is somewhere around Siberia. That means western North America and parts of Europe and interior Asia are turning quite cold.

The split in the polar vortex means another big squirt of warm air will enter the far northern Arctic, including around the North Pole. (This has been going on a lot lately.)

That's bad, because it's been very warm (for them) across much of the Arctic most of this winter. Sea ice extent is running at record lows.

That burst of above freezing air coming in for the high Arctic will just make things worse.

UNITED STATES SCREWED, TOO

Meanwhile, down here in the United States, a big, strong ridge of high pressure - basically an out of season Bermuda High, is about to pump record warm temperatures into the eastern third of the nation.

Out west, the position of one piece of the polar vortex means it's going to be quite cold over the next several days in the western third of the United States. Again, that's bad. It's been incredibly warm in California all winter. Plants and crops are blooming much earlier than normal as a result.

This cold air is going to nip lots of agricultural crops, especially in California's Central Valley. Hard freeze warnings are up, and it looks like the too-early blooming plants are going to get nailed. I expect millions of dollars in agricultural losses because of this. There also might be some shortages of produce in your supermarket.

More inland, winter storm warnings, watches and advisories are up for wide areas of the Rockies and northwestern Plains state.

Big chunks of The eastern half of the country is in trouble with this weather pattern, too. The orientation of this Bermuda high will help draw massive amounts of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, leading to repeated rounds of torrential rains in a broad band from Texas to Michigan.

Many - but not all -  of these areas have had quite a lot of rain this month already. Some areas from northeastern Texas through Arkansas and into southern Ilinois could get seven or more inches of rain over the next week. There is a high chance of flooding, as you'd imagine.

VERMONT EFFECTS:

We barely got clipped by that storm that zipped by to our south last night. Most of us got one to three inches of snow, with a little less around Burlington and up to six inches and southern and eastern parts of the state.

It's kind of mild today, and some of the snow is starting to melt. But you haven't seen anything yet!

After the 30s today, it'll get into the 40s Monday and 50s to low 60s Tuesday and Wednesday. That's definitely record territory.  This will be an unusually humid warm spell for this time of year. When the air is moist, snow tends to melt much faster than when the air is dry.

The start of a thaw. Snow sliding off my St. Albans, Vermont
roof today clings to the eaves in foot-long sheets. With
forecasts for highs near 60 by Tuesday and Wednesday,
this snow will be gone soon. 

Also, partly because of the humidity, temperatures will remain extremely warm Tuesday might.

Lows early Wednesday will probably stay above 50 degrees in the Champlain Valley. That's normal for late May, not February! That'll keep the snow melt going at a fast clip.

Also, there will be a fair bit of rain during this, especially over northern areas, which will be closer to a stalled front.

The combination of melting snow and the rain could lead to flooding. Most of Vermont and northern New York is now under a flood watch Monday through Wednesday.

The biggest problem here is the ice jams left behind from that other mega-thaw in January. They're still there, and this thaw and rain will either dam up water behind the ice jams, make the ice jams even bigger, or move them into more populated areas.

As we found out in towns like Swanton and Johnson back in January, this can quickly lead to destructive flooding.

So yeah, we'll probably have quite a bit to talk about in the weather department over the next several days.

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.

Is Warming Arctic Making Our Winters More Miserable

Boston during the winter of 2015. Will a warming
Arctic paradoxically give us more winters
like the one pictured?

Another study is telling us that the warming Arctic might not be doing us in the Northeast if we hate cold winters, and hate paying big heating bills.

As the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang reported this week, we're going to have to talk about the polar vortex again, that weather system that became such an internet sensation a couple winters back.  

The polar vortex is always up in the Arctic in the winter. It's a tightly wound circulation of frigid air that is perfectly normal, not the monster it was made out to be in the winter of 2013-14.

But a warming Arctic might be screwing around with that polar vortex.

Says the Washington Post:

"Occasionally (the polar vortex) fragments and pieces of it plunge into eastern North America, carrying bitter cold air. The winters of 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 witnessed several such polar vortex disintegrations and resulted in record setting cold snaps."

The polar vortex has showed a weakening trend over the past three decades, says the study in Nature Climate Change, making it easier to fragment and sent cold air into parts of Europe, Asia and North America, especially in the late winter and early spring.

Other studies have shown this overall polar vortex weakening, but the latest study takes things a little further. It's complicated, but an oversimplified version of it is this:

There's more open water in the Arctic in the autumn and early winter in recent years. That means more evaporation, and more water vapor in the air that falls as snow in Siberia and other high latitude locations.

The snow cover up there is thus, counterintuitively, more widespread than usual, which helps sets off weather pattern changes that make the polar vortex more likely to fall apart.

Additional complicated weather patterns favor fragments of the polar vortex to unload on eastern North America in late winter and early spring, mostly March, so we would be more prone to terrible cold snaps during that time of year, which prolongs winter.

Or at least give us weather whiplash. There have also been notable heat waves in recent years during March when the polar vortex isn't unloading on us. Remember the 80s in mid-March, 2012. And 70 degrees plus in early March last year?

The hints of spring might be prone to getting clobbered by these cold waves. Which screws ups and freezes early budding plants and fruit trees, causing crop losses, and less importantly, aggravated gardeners. It's a situation we saw last year, I know.

Of course, this doesn't always happen. A strong El Nino last year kept the Arctic air pretty much bottled up over the far north, and many of us in the Northeast enjoyed (or cursed) the warmest winter on record.

Even then, a brief very sharp cold wave around Valentine's Day brought some daily record low temperatures, and there was a temporary chill down in the second half of March and early April before the warmth returned. Which created the above mentioned havoc with frozen flowers on fruit trees.

As Scientific American notes, this is just another piece of evidence that global warming can cause more extremes in weather. Occasionally, those extremes are bitter cold, despite the overall warming trend.

This new study the Washington Post cites is not the final word, as there is controversy among scientists as to what Arctic thawing means, exactly how it affects the polar vortex, and howwe might feel the effects down here where we live.

We just know that things are getting screwed up with climate change, and we're only beginning to understand the picky details of how this will play out.

By the way, as I write this on a mild early November morning, there is much above snow cover in Eurasia, including Siberia, and much below normal Arctic sea ice, the Weather Channel notes. 

Many forecasters are saying this will lead to a bitter winter this year. Starting as soon as just before Thanksgiving, according to some predictions.

Bundle up and stow cash for those high winter heating bills!

Let's Hope This Is Nation's Worst Storm Of The Winter

Terrible destruction in Garland, Texas after
last night's tornado. Image from NBC DFW. 

As noted last night, fatal tornadoes struck some Dallas suburbs last night.

Latest reports are 11 people died in the Texas tornadoes. 

That brings to at least 25 the number of people killed by tornadoes and storminess in the Uniteds States since Dec. 23. I worry we will lose more today.

We awoke this Sunday morning to enormous parts of the country suffering from very dangerous weather.

For one thing, the tornado threat isn't over, and we've had quite enough fatal, dangerous tornadoes already in the past week, thank you very much. Today's severe storm and tornado threat is highest in eastern Texas, western Louisiana and southern Arkansas.

An enormous flood warning extends from eastern Oklahoma, through central Missouri, Illinois and into Indiana as torrential rains continue to pour down.  An even bigger area of flood watches surrounds this huge, roughly 700 mile long flood warning zone.

Tornado destruction near Dallas, from WFAA. 

Meanwhile, a blizzard is hammering New Mexico and northwestern Texas. Winds are gusting past 60 mph, visibility is zero and so is the wind chill. Drifts are approaching ten feet deep in some spots.

In Clovis, New Mexico, for instance, they were telling everyone to stay indoors or else. And for good reason.

Visibility was about zero in the blizzard, it was only 18 degrees, and the wind was gusting to 64 mph. Snow drifts were already eight feet high.

An ice storm is looming in central Oklahoma. Winter storm warnings and watches cover another enormous area from Kansas to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Other winter weather advisories are in effect today for parts of northern New England.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

Bad, dangerous weather often strikes the United States in the winter. But this storm is covering a wider area with a wider assortment of hazards than is usual. This storm is a real humdinger.

A lot of people are asking: What is causing this havoc?

When you scratch the surface, the answer is easy: There's a big, powerful storm system in the middle of the country.  It's pulling lots of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.  There's also a lot of unusual warmth to the east of the storm, which is helping fuel it. The storm is causing a lot of lift in the atmosphere and stirring up a lot of wind.

So you have a big storm.

Drill down on the investigation and it gets more and more complicated.  The extreme nature of the storm, including the unprecedented Christmas week heat in the eastern United States, makes you wonder if other factors are involved.

The short answer is, Yep.

El Nino is probably playing a role. That infamous polar vortex is also positioned in such a way as to encourage weird weather in the U.S. And maybe, just maybe, global warming is playing a bit part in this.

I liken the investigation into the causes of this stormy mess to any other investigation.  Lots of reasons come to the surface the more you dig.

For instance, imagine you're investigating why a house burned down.  Perhaps the direct cause is simple to find: There was a short in the wire on a string of lights on a Christmas tree, and that sparked the blaze.

Mystery solved, right?

Then you start thinking. Why was the wire on the tree frayed? Did somebody damage it, or was it a manufacturing flaw? Were the homeowners blissfully unaware of the damaged wire or did they choose to ignore it and hope for the best.

Why did the fire spread so quickly? Were there smoke alarms to give early alerts? Sprinklers? Was the construction of the house conducive to allowing the fire to spread so fast?

It can go on and on.

So it is with extreme weather events like the one plaguing the United States now.

Yes, it's caused by a strong storm system. But why is it so strong? And why is it causing such a wide variety of scary weather?

Look more carefully and El Nino becomes a prime suspect. It's the strongest on record and it's mucking up weather patterns world wide.

El Nino tends to strengthen the jet stream across the southern United States. That helps make storms more likely from California to Florida.

These El Nino storms can be stronger than your typical winter storms, and this one could be a prime example

Another suspect: Remember the "Polar Vortex"?

Despite the hype, it's a real thing, and it's a cold circulation or pool in the far northern hemisphere that's always there, and is strongest and most noticeable in the winter.

When the jet stream up north in Canada is extremely wavy, the polar vortex can get closer to the United States, or a piece of it can break off and plunge to or near to the Canadian border. That's when we get our nasty subzero cold waves.

This year, a good strong jet stream is keeping the polar vortex wound up tight and confined way up at or near the North Pole. It's nowhere near getting close enough to plunge a huge bunch of cold air into the United States.

Some typical cold air is in the western United States - after all it IS winter -- but it's not the purest, coldest Arctic air that comes with the Polar Vortex.

Digging deeper into our investigation on this storm, is global warming a suspect? Maybe, but it wasn't the ringleader in this mass of tornadoes, heat, floods, storms and blizzards.

The extreme weather in the United States very likely would have happened with or without global warming. And it's very hard to tease out one weather event like this one and point an accusing finger at global warming.

That's not to mean climate change isn't culpable. It's very plausible that global warming made the Christmas heat wave just a little hotter than it otherwise would have been, which enabled more record highs to be broken.

And, global warming can make precipitation events more extreme. After all, warmer air holds more moisture than colder air.  Maybe because of climate change, there might have been more moisture available to this storm to make the heavy rains even more torrential than they otherwise would have been.

Again, though, it's very hard for even people well above my pay grade to determine how much, if any, global warming had in making this week's weather so extreme. My suspicion is it helped a little.

"Polar Vortex" Fails To Repeal Global Warming; Does Inspire Stupidity

If your favorite source of science information is Donald Trump or Rush Limbaugh, you probably have some wicked bad misinformation on this "polar vortex" that's freezing the nation's collective tush off.

No Donald, The cold wave
does not mean climate change
is repealed. Did your hairpiece
freeze or something?  

Contrary to The Donald's assertion, the "polar vortex" cold snap does not mean global warming is a hoax. And doubly contrary to our buddy Rush, the vortex itself is not a hoax.

The media has seized on the term "polar vortex," the term for the giant upper atmospheric whirlwind of frigid air that usually hangs out near the North Pole but has oddly descended into the northern United States this week.

Since Rush Limbaugh has never heard of the polar vortex, his conclusion is it has come from the imagination of the "liberal media."

He says: "Do you know what the polar vortex is? Have you ever heard of it? Wel, they just created it this week....They're in the middle of a hoax, they're perpetrating a hoax, but they're relying on the total dominance of the media to lie to you each and every day about climate change and global warm."

Uh, no Rush. The polar vortex has been very familiar to meteorologists and other scientists for many,  many decades. It usually hangs around the North Pole, hence it's name. It's always there, especially in the winter, whirling away as part of the Earth's normal weather patterns.

Sometimes, odd kinks in the jet stream drive the polar vortex out of its home into places like Asia, Europe, or in this case, southern Canada and the United States. Unusual, yes, but not unheard of, and it's something scientists have long known occasionally happens.

The only difference this time is, in the age of social media, people heard meteorologists refer to the polar vortex in their forecasts, shared it like crazy on places like Twitter, Instagram and Vine,  and it became an instant cliche among national news broadcasts.

It's also true this cold snap is pretty intense.   It's the strongest in a couple decades at least in parts of the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic states and Southeast.

However, this polar vortex cold snap is also not unheard of and probably has little or nothing to do with global warming, or global cooling for that matter.

The cold snap is only covering about 2 percent of the earth's surface, so it's not like the whole world is chilled to the bone.

In fact, while we're shivering, there's been strong heat waves going on lately in Chile, Argentina and Austrailia. So the question to Donald Trump is, if a cold snap in the United States signals the end of global warming, does a heat wave in Australia mean it's back?

Though individual weather events, like the cold snap or heat waves ongoing elsewhere in the world might be influenced by global climate change, climatologists caution against reading too much into one weather event.

Like I said, the Attack Of The Polar Vortex  has happened before, and will happen again. Some of the worst cold waves in United States history have been caused by the polar vortex making a southward excursion through Canada into the Lower 48.  Memorable cold snaps in 1982, 1985, 1994, 1996 and 2005 were caused by the polar vortex invading the United States.

Also this cold snap is pretty short lived. New England got a taste of it last week for two or three days before it retreated. Then it attacked the upper Midwest starting Sunday and has spread to the East Coast since.

But it's already starting to warm up in places like North Dakota, which experienced the cold wave first. By the end of the week, most of the nation will have normal or even above normal temperatures.

Other cold waves in history have lasted weeks, not a few days like this one. So don't get too excited about it.

These intense cold waves have actually been getting somewhat less frequent and less intense in recent decades.  On average, United States winters are warmer than they were 50 years ago. But any climate change has not repealed winter. We still get cold waves, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Some climate scientists suggest that since the Arctic is getting warmer faster than the rest of the northern hemisphere, the jet stream is weakening, which makes in meander more, which it turn means you can get more of these weird cold snaps and stronger heat waves.

That might be true, but since this visit by the polar vortex isn't exactly unprecedented, chances are we can chalk this up to the usual back and forth shifts in climate change.  There might be plenty of signs that the world's climate is going off the rails, but this isn't one of them.

So no, Donald and Rush, the science of global warming remains pretty sound, despite your tiresome protestations to the contrary.

It's just that this polar vortex is completely besides the point, and Donald and Rush are too stupid, or too  stubborn, or both, to admit it. Did you both get frostbite to the brain?