USA TODAY International Edition
Abandon hope: Polar vortex paying visit
Northern states bracing for cold, snowy weather
It’s back!
A chunk of the polar vortex is forecast to slide over the central and eastern United States over the next few days, marking its first unwelcome visit of the season. In many locations, temperatures will be more like mid-January than mid-November.
“It’s time to start talking about the polar vortex,” said weather.us meteorologist Ryan Maue. “If your furnace is on the fritz, then perhaps it’s a good time to get that fixed.”
Through much of the rest of this week, high temperatures in parts of the northern Rockies and northern Plains will barely rise above 32 degrees each day, the Weather Channel said. Bismarck, North Dakota, may only briefly rise above freezing this weekend.
By the weekend, the cold will sweep into the Northeast, where daytime highs may struggle to get out of the 30s and 40s Saturday and Sunday.
Snow is coming with the cold in some areas. In the central Plains, 2 to 6 inches was forecast on Wednesday night into Thursday. Snow is likely Friday and Saturday near the Great Lakes, including potentially heavy lake-effect snow in the usual snowbelt regions of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, according to AccuWeather.
Lake-effect snow, which can last for a few minutes or several days, falls from narrow bands of clouds that form when cold, dry arctic air passes over a large, relatively mild lake. These snows can occur only in the fall or early winter, before the lakes freeze over.
“The frigid air passing over the stillwarm Great Lakes will increase chances for lake-effect snow,” said AccuWeather meteorologist Steve Travis. In heavier snow bands, enough snow could pile up to require plowing and shoveling.
The cold forecast has sent natural gas prices soaring, CNBC reported.
If the cold persists this fall and winter, natural gas prices could rise above $5 or $6 per million British thermal units for weeks at a time, Jen Snyder of RS Energy told CNBC. Traders have not seen those price levels since the polar vortex of winter 2014, she said.
The polar vortex is a large area of cold air high up in the atmosphere that normally spins over the North Pole (as its name suggests), but thanks to a meandering jet stream, some of the vortex can slosh down into North America, funneling unspeakably cold air down here.
The vortex has likely “existed in some form for the past 4.5 billion years,” according to senior scientist Jeff Kiehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
After this Arctic blast, temperatures may rebound to average or above-average levels later in November, said Judah Cohen, a meteorologist with Atmospheric and Environmental Research.