Why The Polar Vortex is Now in The Spotlight in Early February

You may have seen social media posts about it and chatter of big weather pattern changes heading our way, but what’s really going on way above us in the stratosphere?

The polar vortex takes up a lot of real estate in the next layer above where weather occurs, the stratosphere.

The lower vortex has been fluctuating between strong and weaker than average the entire winter. This part of the vortex interacts with the weather patterns and alters them, so it’s key to monitor the progress of the lower vortex. A strong vortex often keeps the cold bottled up in the Arctic and a weak vortex allows it to spread to either the U.S., Europe or Asia.

The latest trends support the very strong lower polar vortex with tightly wound winds to weaken as the winds lower in speed (same concept as a figure skater who slows down as she throws her arms out):

As seen below, the upper part of the polar vortex has been much stronger than average the entire winter. However, it has not been responsible for our cold and snowy January. The trend is for the upper part of the polar vortex to also weaken in mid-February.

The overall weather pattern outline shows the Pacific Ridge pattern (historically warmest pattern in the East) will transition to an Alaska Ridge pattern (historically coldest pattern for the Plains and East) between February 12-15, but it still appears to be a transient blast of cold air that will push from the Rockies and Plains to the East.

Recall last winter, the crux of our snow and cold weather occurred between January 13 and 22nd before we had our warmest day of the month on January 26. This was triggered by a breakdown of the Stratospheric Polar Vortex (also known as a Stratospheric Warming Event) that occurred in early January 2024 and eventually triggered a change in our weather pattern by mid-month.

While there are similarities to the weather pattern following a Stratospheric Warming Event in February 2018, the impacts locally didn’t occur until the first half of March, so about a month later. Every bit hit to the polar vortex has a different timescale as to when it impacts our weather, but the big hit this month looks to be fairly immediate.

The bottom line is that winter is not finished with southern West Virginia and we will likely see another blast of below-average temperatures and snowfall during the middle of February. However, it won’t be sustainable like January’s deep freeze, so we will likely return above average before the month is finished.

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