The dangerously cold and snowy winterstorm covering much of the US this week isn't actually the polarvortex as we've been led to believe.
can’t put snow in your backyard, but changes in the polar vortex can load the dice for wintry weather – and this year, the dice rolled Yahtzee."Blaming wicked winter weather on the polar vortex is nothing new. Prior to last February's outbreak, there were headlines like
When they do influence each other, how does that actually happen? It turns out that scientists have some good ideas about this, but the details aren't fully worked out. In a nutshell, here's what's known: "Sometimes it stretches, and it can even break into separate swirls," Francis told me. "When that happens, we know we're going to get wacky weather somewhere over the Northern Hemisphere. This is one of these times."
"It is a very complicated connection between the two, and it varies," Francis said. "Models don't have the stratosphere very well represented, so this is the subject of ongoing research."
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