We’re a tad over a month away from the spring equinox, the days are getting longer, the sun is shining more – and the polar vortex is about to descend over much of the United States again, this time maybe even colder than before. This next influx will be the tenth this year – and it’s going to be a doozy.
The coldest burst of Arctic air this season is coming to put an icy exclamation point on America’s winter of repeated polar vortex invasions, meteorologists warn. And it will stay frozen there all next week.
Different weather forces in the Arctic are combining to push the chilly air that usually stays near the North Pole not just into the United States, but also Europe, several meteorologists tell The Associated Press.
This will be the 10th time this winter that the polar vortex — which keeps the coldest of Arctic air penned in at the top of the world — stretches like a rubber band to send some of that big chill south, said Judah Cohen, seasonal forecast director at the private firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research. In a normal winter, it happens maybe two or three times.
This winter, with record snow in New Orleans and drought and destructive wildfires in Southern California, has not been normal.
Since the start of meteorological winter on December 1st of last year, New Orleans has seen more snow than Anchorage. And it’s Anchorage-style temperatures – maybe even Fairbanks-style temperatures – that much of the U.S. east of the Rockies will be seeing.
The latest projected cold outbreak should first hit the northern Rockies and northern Plains Saturday and then stick around all next week. The cold will likely concentrate east of the Rockies with only the far American west and central and southern Florida exempted, meteorologists said.
On Tuesday, expect the Lower 48 states to have an average low of 16.6 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 8.6 Celsius), and then plunge to 14 degrees (minus 10 Celsius) on Wednesday, calculated private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist.