Polar vortex

sculptor

sculptor

Valued Senior Member
It seems that a strong polar vortex has not yet formed.
3 pix
the first at ground level shows a peculiar elongated cold air mass.
the second at 70 hpa shows the vortex forming in the lower stratosphere
the third at 10 hpa shows it strengthening in the stratosphere, but offset from the 70 hpa level

https://earth.nullschool.net/#curre...hographic=-88.45,95.70,289/loc=-91.491,41.491

https://earth.nullschool.net/#curre...hographic=-88.45,95.70,289/loc=-91.491,41.491

https://earth.nullschool.net/#curre...hographic=-88.45,95.70,289/loc=-91.491,41.491

On the third one, please note the warm spot over siberia.
Will that prove disruptive?
 
OK it looks like the warm blob noted above is indeed an ssw event which will most likely disrupt the newly formed polar vortex.........(it seems to have formed a tad late this year)..
The warm blob is almost 100 degrees C warmer than the rest of the polar vortex!
Most likely; a disruptor indeed---at least in the making...
and
a meteorological prognostication(also known as a wild guess until the warm blob is further studied in it's unknown future)
cold in eurasia early january
cold in north america late january

...................
it's gonna be interesting
and
From whence came this warm blob?
Any guesses?
 
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sculptor said:
From whence came this warm blob?
Click to expand...
It grew in place. There's a backup function on the nullschool site.

Tracing factors at lower levels, a high pressure cold mass pinned north of the Himalayas seems to have partly blocked a warmer and wetter flow of air coming south from the unusually ice free (and therefore warmer and wetter) Arctic, concentrating it over the also thawing (and therefore warmer, as well as more convective from the water vapor) Siberian tundra. At least, that's the visual pattern at the lower levels over the past few days.

These kinds of disruptions of the polar vortex are of course among the standard, boilerplate, high likelihood projections of AGW alarmists.

If it proceeds as likely guesses have it now, Minnesota may have its first rain-free January since sometime in the '90s. The first "normal" January in many years, in other words.
 
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This ssw event seems most likely to have originated when winds came out of the Junggar basin around the east end of the Tian
Shan and down into the Tarim basin, pushing the hot air of the Takla Makan desert up against the Kunlun Shan, and thence into the stratosphere.


temp10anim.gif


So far, the warm blob does not seem to be having much of an effect on the vortex.

It's gonna be interesting to watch it's progress.
Does anyone have anything with a better perspective than the nullschool maps?
 
iceaura said:
Minnesota is running about average, for January.
The new normal. It's rained, a little, already - and a warm thaw is in the forecast.
Click to expand...

Enjoy it while it lasts.
I'll hazard the guess that before the week is out, you'll feel sub-zero temperatures.
 
sculptor said:
Enjoy it while it lasts.
I'll hazard the guess that before the week is out, you'll feel sub-zero temperatures.
Click to expand...
As overnight lows, quite likely. It is January in Minnesota.

Already scaled back highs, btw - 40 turned into 32 overnight (and then it hit 34+ - another newly common aspect).
That is also becoming common (large changes in predicted max winter day temps from one day to the next - a slower undulating jet stream from a weaker vortex is also, paradoxically, a less predictable one).

But still the new normal - it's already rained (something my childhood almost never saw in January), January appears likely to be not much colder, perhaps even warmer, than December was (an odd feature of the new normal), and so forth.

Meanwhile, the Republican shutdown has affected the weather forecasts - it caught the NWS at a bad time.
 
sculptor said:
Meanwhile, we have had a colder(many new low temperature records set) and snowier winter than normal.
Click to expand...
So far Minnesota has had an average winter - a bit on the mild side, but moving up. That's the new average, btw - last thirty or forty years.

The recent cold and snow could - if it continues into March and April - bring this winter to somewhat above average severity from its mild status through January.

The timing of the cold and snow - February, rather than January (cold) and March (snow) - has created problems. It's warm enough to snow heavily, but too cold and too low a sun to melt afterwards - the stuff is piling up.
So it's not exactly normal per se - but the "severity index" hasn't broken 100 even, in most places (the southern half, including the Twin Cities, has been a little harder hit comparatively - 103 through Feb 21. Below 150 is "moderate")
http://northlandoutdoors.areavoices.com/2019/02/21/wildlife-weathering-the-winter-ok-so-far/
https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/climate/journal/winter_misery_index.html
https://images.dnr.state.mn.us/natu.../journal/winter_snow_and_cold_index_18_19.jpg

Note the trends in the graph, including the uptick in the snow contribution since AGW kicked in around 1960. Misery has become snow more than cold, just as predicted by the models and just as we are seeing now.
 
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