No, Bitter Cold Isn't Coming Anytime Soon, Despite Social Media Click Bait

A brief but intense cold wave last February 3 brought steam
devils and funnels over the relatively warm waters of
Lake Champlain. That cold spell hit in an otherwise
warm winter. Despite the hype, there's no 
guarantees on whether it will turn frigid 
later this winter. 

 If you pay attention to any of the click bait weather sites on social media, you'd think we're headed into a new ice age later on in January. 

Oh, we have a sudden stratospheric warming!  The polar vortex is going to go haywire! Incredible cold is going to envelop the Northern Hemisphere for the rest of the winter! We're ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!

Um, no. Relax, folks. 

For us here in Vermont, and for the rest of the nation for that matter, we probably will see some sharp cold spells in January and February. 

It's winter, after all. Climate change does not prevent subzero cold waves. It just makes them somewhat less likely, 

And honestly, it's incredibly hard to imagine our January will be nearly as much warmer than normal as this December has been. This month will very likely be the second warmest December on record in Burlington. 

THE REALITY

Like all internet hype, there are grains of truth in them and the basic science behind the hype is also fairly accurate. But that doesn't mean a frigid Armageddon.  It just means we'll have interesting weather. Nobody in their right mind is able to tell you what kind of interesting weather we'll see beyond, say New Year's Day.  So we'll have to work with what we have.

To set this up, let's review the basics. First, the polar vortex.  It's a big whirl of cold air in the atmosphere that's always somewhere in or near the Arctic during the colder months. Depending on where the polar vortex is, and how the jet stream is oriented around it, the Arctic air might slip down into Europe, or Asia, or North America. Or it could remain bottled up near the Arctic.

For the most part, the polar vortex has lately been pretty tight and sitting way up there in the far north. That's keeping the bulk of the ridiculously cold air far to our north. That's why it's so warm. 

The jet stream is in the process of reconfiguring itself, so it might get a little colder as we head into the New Year, but it will still be fairly mild. 

The next big thing in the hype machine is that sudden stratospheric warming.  For some reason, in roughly half of all winters, the stratosphere warms up over the far north. It's part of a pattern in which the polar vortex abruptly weakens and gets disorganized. The polar vortex can also stretch out in weird directions and can temporarily relocate it further south. 

When this happens, bitter Arctic air can easily slam southward........somewhere.  Again, could be Europe, could be Asia, could be southern Canada and the United States.

The reason people online are getting the vapors is because there are signs a sudden stratospheric warming might be about to happen.  We're not absolutely sure whether it will happen, but the way signs are pointing, experienced meteorologist wouldn't' be surprised if it does in the next couple of weeks. 

The effects of this on the ground are delayed a bit. So whoever loses the luck of the draw - if anybody - in this, it won't happen until maybe the second half of January into February. 

On top of all this, we have other factors to consider.  We're in a raging El Nino, which keeps the southern end of the jet stream across the U.S. South active. Will a weirded out polar vortex work in concert with El Nino to direct Arctic cold and blizzards into the United States?   Or will El Nino direct any cold air toward Europe?  

The answer? Dunno. 

But wait, there's more! Other complex factors will help determine whether we have any kind of old fashioned Arctic blast later this winter, or will it be another pffft type of season.  

 Will the weather pattern feature a jet stream blowing hard into the West Coast then heading east across America? That could keep us on the warm side. Or maybe a ridge of high pressure will develop over the Rockies and western Canada. That would send cold air plunging our way. Or maybe there will be blocking high pressure in or near Greenland, which could also make us cold and stormy. Another possibility is a ridge of high pressure off the southeast coast, which keep us in New England mild.

Yeah, it's complicated. 

BOTTOM LINE

It's fun to try to read the tea leaves to figure out what the rest of the winter will be like. I plead guilty to that sort of thing. 

Some weather enthusiasts love to imagine epic East Coast blizzards.  That's all well and good. But some of them are wishcasting - defined as forecasting for the kind of weather they want, and not necessarily what will actually happen. 

Basically, don't believe any forecast you hear that's more than five days out. If you wake up on Saturday morning to hear that a blizzard is coming the following Saturday, ignore it until midweek, and then see whether wintry weather is coming or not. 

Chances are, thet blizzard that one computer model run out of of hundreds spit out will go poof, and we'll just have boring January weather instead.  

Will A "Sudden Stratospheric Warming" Postpone Spring?

Just one forecast for temperature anomalies in the 
lower stratosphere toward the end of this week. All that
orange represents something called a Sudden 
Stratospheric Warming. This can disrupt the polar vortex,
which in turn can cause cold, stormy weather in
the mid-latitudes in March. 

As I keep harping on, it's been a warm winter. Really warm.

Since the winter of 2022-23 is turning out to be a dud for cold and snow lovers, a lot of people are probably saying, "Let's get on with spring already, then."

Not so fast.

Because Ma Nature seems intent on punishing us awful humans, she's launching something called a "sudden stratospheric warming."

It could mean that winter finally hits - in March. 

As the Washington Post reports: 

"Several miles above the North Pole, an atmospheric chain reaction may soon initiate that sets off important changes to the weather pattern across the Northern Hemisphere in the coming weeks. 

In places where cold and snow have mostly remained absent, the sequence could trigger a wintry revenge. However, it's still unclear how significant or long-lasting any changes may be and exactly where and when they would occur."

The not all that well understood phenomenon starts with the stratosphere over the northern reaches of the Earth suddenly and abruptly warms up, by as many as 60 degrees.

When this happens, it usually disrupts the polar vortex, that whirl of cold that's usually somewhere up in the Arctic.

The polar vortex has been mostly "well behaved" this winter, sitting high up in the Arctic. That has for the most part prevented very cold air from plunging into places like the United States and Europe.  Which explains the warm winter both areas have had. 

The polar vortex did get disrupted for other reasons recently, making it plunge down toward New England and give us that brief bitter blast of Arctic air on February 3 and 4. But, the vortex quickly got its act back, together, and settled itself far to the north again. That's why it has once again warmed up.

A sudden stratospheric warming is more likely to disrupt the polar vortex. That means weather mischief somewhere in the mid-latitudes. Think the United States, southern Canada, Europe, China, Japan, places like that. 

Even if we do see that sudden stratospheric warming, or SSW, we don't know if it will have a big effect or whether it will be a nothing burger. If it does have a large impact, we don't know where that might be as of yet. Could be the western U.S., or could be the East, who knows? Or it could focus on Europe.

Whatever happens, generally speaking, the effects of a SSW last four to six weeks. 

The most recent example of a big headache created by a SSW, we only need to harken back to late February and March 2018. 

In late February, 2018 the so-called "Beast From The East" slammed Great Britain. Frigid winds from Siberia flowed westward to the UK, causing some of the most intense cold and blizzards in recent memory.

More locally here in Vermont, we had a remarkably warm February, 2018 which culminated in temperatures as high as 70 degrees in Montpelier, which is their all time hottest temperature for February. Burlington reached 69, which would have been the hottest February reading ever if not for a 72 degree temperature spike the previous February.

Then came March, 2018, once that year's SSW took full effect. In mid-March, up to 30 inches of snow fell in Vermont. Along the New England coast, four snowy nor'easters battered the region during the month. 

It really took until late April, 2018 for temperatures to consistently return to normal or above.

Of course, 2018 was almost a worst case scenario. Chances are it won't be that bad. Or if it is, it won't last as long, Or it won't affect us here in Vermont all that much. You never know. 

The last SSW to occur was in January, 2021. That helped lead to a record breaking cold wave in the Plains and Southeast in February, 2021. It focused on Texas, causing deadly blackouts amid the cold, killing dozens of people. 

That 2021 event was a yawner here in Vermont. We just kind of had average weather in February and and March that year. 

A SSW more often affects the weather in northwestern Europe than it does the United States, but the U.S. sees the effects often enough. I'm betting on at least some cold weather in March here in Vermont. That means more frequent below normal temperatures than we saw in January and February.

If the SSW actually happens, it will probably begin this week if it hasn't already started.  It takes a week or two after the stratospheric warming to have much effect on where people live.,

That would take us into early March. 

It's a little too soon for long range forecasts to accurate predict what the weather will be like in early March.  But some of the preliminary long range computer projections seem to indicate a switch to colder, stormier weather in the eastern U.S., including New England, possibly arriving in the last few days of February and continuing at least into the opening days of March.

That's not set in stone, but the chances are there. 

Besides, we're overdue for a colder than average month in Vermont. February will be warmer than normal, meaning the last time we had a chillier than average month in Burlington was September. Even that was a fraction of a degree cooler than normal. And it was the "new normal" which is skewed toward warmer averages than decades ago.

And remember this non-scientific adage that has always worked for me: No good weather in Vermont goes unpunished. If you got a break in the weather in one month, you'll pay dearly the next. 

 

Sudden Stratospheric Warming: No, Not Some Fresh Hell, But......

If you are even a slight weather geek, you might have heard about the latest "Now What!" thing going on, big, but far removed from the insurrection chaos in Washington. 

Something called a Sudden Stratospheric Warming could
easily flip us in Vermont to a much colder, snowier
pattern toward the end of the month. 

The event is something called a "Sudden Stratospheric Warming," which sounds ominous enough for people to ask what fresh hell is this going to be. 

Before you panic, Sudden Stratospheric Warming," or what we'll all SSW for short, isn't another sign of the apocalypse.  Though it does have the potential for making it kind of unpleasant to be outdoors for awhile. 

CBS meteorologist Jeff Berardelli has a great, detailed explainer on this, but I'll also give it to you in a nutshell.  

What the SSW involved was the temperature in the stratosphere, about 50,000 to 100,000 feet overhead suddenly jumped by 100 degrees, which of course is a LOT. 

Major SSW's like this one is, happen on average perhaps six times per decade. So it's relatively rare, but nothing we haven't easily dealt with before. 

This sudden warming screws up the Polar Vortex, which is another thing you've probably heard hyped quite a bit in recent years. 

To review, the Polar Vortex isn't some new hazard that cropped up in recent years. It's always been there, especially during the winter, and it's completely normal. 

The Polar Vortex is just a huge spinning mass of frigid air near the Arctic. This vortex can move around quite a bit, and pieces of it can break off. If the Polar Vortex gets relatively close to us, or a piece breaks off near us, it gets bitterly cold in these parts. Just one of those Arctic outbreaks we Vermonters should be used to by now. 

When a SSW happens, it can rip the Polar Vortex apart, splitting it into two, three or even four pieces. Those Polar Vortex pieces then head south toward the mid-latitudes, causing frigid, stormy weather in places where  lot of people live, like Europe, Asia, southern Canada and the United States.

This turn to cold and stormy weather is already taking place in parts of Europe and Asia.

It's only a matter of time before the SSW and the messed up Polar Vortex pieces will end our mild, quiet weather around here. 

Just how that will play out is the question. 

It can easily get colder around here than it's been, and it certainly can't get much quieter in terms of storms. 

As things develop, it seems like it will temporarily turn even milder here next week as the jet stream buckles and allows frigid air to flood first into the northern Rockies and upper Plains states next week. 

Eventually,  later this month, the cold air probably comes our way.  The new pattern caused in large part by the SSW also seems favorable for East Coast snowstorms, but again, the devil is in the details. There are no guarantees of how much snow we might get later this month. 

We also don't know where the core of the cold air might set up.  It could set up well to our west, so we'd stay relatively close to average for winter.  Or, the cold waves we'd get would be sort of brief and not anything to write home to ma about. We'll just have to wait and see.

There's also no guarantee as to how long the effects of the SSW will last. They rough weather often continues for four to eight weeks, but it won't be constant cold and snow.  It would just be chilly and snowy most of the time, with a few warmer breaks thrown in.

As Berardelli writes, it's possible climate change might be making these SSW's more likely.

One theory being explored is that a lack of Arctic sea ice might play a role in triggering SSWs.  Sea ice up there has been low for years now, as the Arctic has warmed faster than the rest of the planet due to climate change. 

The lack of ice allows more warmth and moisture to enter the atmosphere as it takes longer for ice to re-form in the autumn. This, in turn, seems to cause some changes in the wintertime jet stream over northern Asia.

We saw record high pressure over Mongolia earlier this winter and record low pressure in the northeast Pacific. All these things that I've just described can lead to a SWW or are symptoms of it.  Berardelli gets into much more detail on this, and it's worth the read.    

There is still some conflicting evidence, but indications are that the SSWs are getting more frequent with the diminishing ice up in the Arctic. 

That screws up life for us.  While the climate and winters around here are generally getting warmer (this winter so far is Exhibit A), places like the Northeast and parts of Europe are apparently getting more prone to intense winter cold waves and epic snowstorms that interrupt this generally warming scenario. 

As noted, we don't know exactly how the weather will play out here in late January and February due to this SSW, but it sure looks like our mild winter is going to get less so.