Baby It's Cold Outside!!!!
It is being blamed on the Polar Vortex. New buzz words for cold, frigid and nasty below freezing temperatures. Some remembering cold winters being blamed on the Alberta Clipper. Are they one and the same? How do we turn them off?
Each system is responsible for frigid temperatures, fierce winds and snowfall. While they are both centers of low atmospheric pressure, a polar vortex is an actual cyclone, albeit a very large one.
The Alberta clipper forms, moves across North America from west to east, and then breaks up. Whereas the polar vortices are just "there," all the time, drifting, ebbing and flowing, strengthening and weakening. So, the polar vortex doesn't "form, then sweep, then disband." It's always up there at the North Pole within a certain area, and when the conditions are right it expands or "spills" down into Canada and the US.
The Alberta clipper is fast-moving; the polar vortex, not so much. The "Alberta" part of the name is obviously a reference to its origin in the area of Alberta, but the "clipper" part is a reference to the fast-moving sea vessels. The polar vortex doesn't move so much as it just changes shape. And how fast it changes shape depends on what happens to those forces that are keeping it penned in.
The Polar Vortex usually retreats in mid March but can extend into May, opening the door for warmer air and Spring. The winter of 2014, a Polar Vortex nightmare, set many records here in Michigan. Let's hope the winter of 2015 will not be following with that trend.
NORTHERN POLAR VORTEX, WITH CENTERS OVER SIBERIA AND CANADA
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