United States Remains Frigid While Much Of The Rest Of The World Stays Balmy

Schematic from climate.gov of how cold waves work
Left image is when the jet stream keeps the polar vortex
way up north, preventing much cold air in the winter
from coming south. The right image which has
happened frequently this winter is when the jet
stream gets wonky and wavy, allowing parts of the
polar vortex to get closer, supplying frigid Arctic air.

The world's cold spot this winter, perhaps figuratively, and also literally, it turns out, is the United States. 

No, we weren't colder than the North Pole. But relative to average, the coldest temperatures on Earth seemed to often centered on the Grand Ole US of A. 

January featured a cold continental United States with a warm rest of the world. 

While others around the globe were basking in warmth, Gulf Coast cities like Lafayette, New Orleans, Mobile and Pensacola were experiencing an unprecedented snowstorm and all-time record cold 

February has continued the trend. 

Warm spells continue to grace much of the world, with record heat in places like Brazil, Mozambique, southeast Asia, even Lapland and the Arctic north of Scandinavia. 

Meanwhile, places like North Dakota and Montana were in the 30s below zero.  Dangerous wind chills extended down to the Gulf Coast. 

Along the North Carolina and Virginia coasts last week deep snow blanketed the region. Virginia Beach had as much as a foot of snow. Norfolk, Virginia had 10 inches of snow. 

As the Washington Post reports, a remote area about 50 miles northwest of Pierre, South Dakota was, as of a few days ago was the world's coldest place relative to average. Sure, other places were colder, but none were as much as 11 degrees below average.

We in Vermont have at partly shared in this chill, but at least it hasn't been as bad as other parts of nation. 

Much of the U.S. - including Vermont have seen in the past few days temperatures moderate for now. North Dakota is seeing some above freezing temperatures and it has gotten as high as the 50s in South Dakota. Vermont is expecting temperatures near 40 this week. 

But it doesn't look like we're quite done. The weather pattern in early March will revert at least briefly to that cold one again for the United States. And that winter chill could last at least into mid-March. 

REASONS

The particular chilly weather in the United States especially compared to what's going on in the rest of the world, has revived the discussion and debate over whether climate change is paradoxically sending us these cold blasts. 

We know there's always been bitter Arctic cold waves in the United States, and the basic weather pattern that causes them is usually the same. A big northward bulge in the jet stream forms over western North America. 

That helps create a corresponding sharp southward dip in the jet stream down into the central and eastern United States.  Meanwhile there's the polar vortex, that big upper air swirl of frigid air that usually spins somewhere in the far northern hemisphere in the winter. 

This weather pattern I described displaces the polar vortex southward, closer to the United States. Or the pattern stretches the polar vortex into the shape of a peanut, with one end of the "peanut" close to the U.S. and causing a big chill. 

Bottom line: this polar vortex/jet stream set up  funnels the frigid air direct from near the North Pole to the eastern half to two thirds of the United States. 

As the Washington Post describes it, this winter is probably the most intense siege of polar vortex type weather in the United States since 2014. Though the cold in 2014 was more consistent and much worse than what we have experienced this winter. 

Of course, a bit of a factor why this winter has been a little milder than 2014 is that the whole world has continued to warm since then.  So it's a bit harder for it to get as cold as it once did - though there's always exceptions. 

CLIMATE CHANGE?

A hot topic that's been going on for years now is Arctic warming. The Arctic is getting toastier much faster than the mid-latitudes. Is this causing the jet stream and the polar vortex to get weird, taking more excursions south toward the United States or Europe more often than it used to?

The question is still not settled.  

There are also picky details regarding those unsettled questions that are still being hashed out. We know that winters in general have been getting warmer almost everywhere. But some studies suggest some areas - the northeastern U.S. among them - seem to be having much more variable winters.  Some are super warm, a few are pretty intense. 

Even there, it gets muddied. Researchers know the winters are getting milder. They've also found that the absolute coldest temperature in each winter is warming at an even faster clip. 

VERMONT EFFECTS

Our winter is not over, but like much of the rest of the nation, the vigorous winter of 2025 seems like a mild April breeze compared to 2014.  The polar vortex was a frequent visitor to the Northeast in the winter of 2015, which locally was more harsh than the year before. 

So 2015 is the most recent winter that was extremely cold. February that year had an average temperature of 7.6 degrees the third coldest on record behind 1934 and 1979. 

Depending on what this week's anticipated warm spell will do, February, 2025 might turn out to be the coldest since 2015, but will be far, far, milder than that year. 

February, 2025 will be snowier than than 2015, when 22.7 inches fell. We're already about nine inches ahead of 2015 this month.  

However, in 2015, the storm track was just to our east. Late January and February was the historic "snowmageddon" in Boston, when 95 inches of snow fell within a month. 

The bottom line for Vermont is this winter will end up as a more "traditional" one than we've seen in recent years, but it will be far, far from the coldest. And not nearly the snowiest, either, unless we have an enormous surprise in March and April.