Five centuries ago, the first travelers to the North Pole were surprised to discover that the world was covered in black in winter. For six months of the year, temperatures in that northern part of the planet can exceed -76 degrees. That winter cold builds up every season, sometimes turning it south into a phenomenon known as polar vortex.
Many navigators of the 16th century, as Javier Peláez describes in his beautiful book “500 Years of Cold”, perished in the face of the slopes approaching these extreme temperatures before reaching the most remote place on earth.
The reason, it is now known, is that the mass of cold, low-pressure air that forms the polar vortex it inevitably moves south as it accumulates.
An article published on the National Weather Service (NWS) website explains that the polar vortex “always exists near the polar regions.” It is a phenomenon that “weakens in summer and intensifies in winter.. The term ‘vortex’ refers to the counterclockwise rotation that keeps cold air close to the poles. “
On many occasions, the text continues with the polar vortex during the winter of the Northern Hemisphere expands and sends cold air south next to the jet stream.
“This happens regularly in the winter and is usually associated with extreme cold waves coming from the Arctic in the United States,” he says.
Alert across the US
This weekend, NWS meteorologists have predicted that the cold air from the polar vortex will descend through the country’s northern plains and could spread to the southern United States on Monday or Tuesday, affecting all the states in the country, including Hawaii, have temperatures below zero from Monday of next week.
The foregoing, it was reported, included 86% of the country and 235 million people.
Marcia Cronce, NWS meteorologist told CNN that “we received between 2 and 3 of these cold spells every year”.
Cronce added that “the coldest air of the season awaits us, it will be shocking.”
Madison, Wisconsin, will be posting even lower numbers at the end of the week: a maximum of 10 degrees by Saturday. The wind will also be an important factor in the coming weather.
Wind chill in areas outside Milwaukee can reach -18 to -29 degrees on Saturday evenings and Sundays.
Historical data
This extreme cold snap is similar to that of Madison that occurred in January 2014, and similar to others that have occurred in the past, including those of 1977, 1982, 1985 and 1989.
The office of NWS in Chicago it also warned of dangerous temperatures in the region.
“A mass of air from icy to extremely cold arriving at the weekend and continuing into the following week, with minimum temperatures in some places of -9.9 degrees or less and wind chill of -19.8 and -29 degrees, or even colder, it is possible from Sunday evening to Monday ”, they said.
Another city that could get into trouble due to low temperatures is Atlanta, that it can reach 19 degrees on Monday, the lowest temperature since 2018.
The east coast can also experience temperature changes. The city of Washington is expected to drop to 17.6 degrees on Tuesday morning. It probably won’t rise above freezing for the rest of the week.
New York and Philadelphia will record lows below 12.2 degrees on Monday morning, with peaks just 21.2 degrees on Tuesday afternoon.
In conditions as expected with the cold being pushed by the so-called polar vortex, the NWS warned the public of the risk they run if they don’t wear proper clothing. Freezing, they said, could happen in half an hour.
