EDITORIAL

Cold cap has slipped

Posted 1/28/14

Yesterday it was a balmy 40 degrees. It felt like spring was around the corner. The forecast for today is a low of 10 degrees and only Mother Nature knows what’s in store for the next couple of …

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EDITORIAL

Cold cap has slipped

Posted

Yesterday it was a balmy 40 degrees. It felt like spring was around the corner. The forecast for today is a low of 10 degrees and only Mother Nature knows what’s in store for the next couple of months, even though Punxsutawney Phil will poke his head from his burrow on Sunday and tell us … for certain?

As David Vallee, hydrologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service’s Northeast River Forecast Center says, in a story in today’s Beacon reported Jennifer Rodrigues, the polar vortex is the blame for this on-again, off-again frigid weather. The vortex, a spinning mass of arctic air, is hardly new. What’s different this year is that instead of sitting over the North Pole like a cap, it has slid down the face of the globe and is now over the upper middle of the United States and a huge section of Canada.

So, why should that cause the Northeast such chills?

The answer is in the jet stream and its flow from west to east. The stream, which sends storms our way, picks up all that Arctic air on its way.

Put in those terms, the phenomenon all sounds pretty simple. We’re in the spin cycle of a cold-water wash with the prospect of several more rinses before being cast into the drier. Who knows? In another six months we’ll probably be complaining about the heat. Are there tropical vortexes?

In any event, Vallee had some good news for us.

Yes, he said, it could be worse than it is. Usually, at this time of year, there’s a high-pressure system parked over Greenland. The effect is that of a windbreak that slows the passage of storms to its east. But the high-pressure system is not there for the moment, meaning storms move rapidly … meaning less snow for us. Whew!

Anyway, it’s been a schizophrenic winter.

And you thought the sighting of Snowy Owls was extraordinary? Wait until the polar bears go in search of their vortex.

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