Weather Update: Reporting On The Polar Vortex And Forecast For The Rest Of Winter

Featured in this Show

• Polar Vortex, Arctic Blast … What’s With All The Bluster?

  Yes, it’s cold. So cold no one wants to leave home and even pit bulls are wearing booties on their paws.

  January’s bone-chilling cold has set both teeth and media outlets a chattering. Suddenly terms like “polar vortex” and “arctic blast” are tossed about in the ominous tones of an action thriller.

  In the face of this bluster, “The Weather Guys,” Steve Ackerman and Jon Martin, suggest people step back — actually way back in history — and (forgive the pun) chill out a little. For, while the current cold snap can freeze one’s breath, it’s not all that unusual.

  “This is the kind of thing that happens in late January,” said Martin, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Not every single year, and that’s why maybe people forget. It happens five or six out of every 10 years, and occasionally, it’s more widespread, like this year.”

  Some local people may recall the freezing temperatures of the late 1970s, which came to be known as the “mini-Ice Age.” According to Martin, this might be stretching it too far.

  “I’m not sure it’s fair to call what happened in ’76 to ’79 a mini-Ice Age, but colloquially, for sure, it was very cold,” he said.

  Martin said that cold temperatures have occurred only a few years ago.

  “People should remember (that) on Christmas Day in 2008, we had minus 25 degrees at the airport and have not had that again,” he said.

  Not to mention times, like in 2000, when the wind chill factor plunged temperatures into the minus 50s and 60s.

  Martin and Ackerman were only getting warmed up. In addition to dispelling misinformation about this recent cold snap, they also took time to explain terms like “polar vortex.”

  According to Martin, it’s a term of industry that’s been around for a long time.

  “It’s a very simple idea . . . that as the (North) Pole gets colder in the winter time, that tends to intensify the jet stream and make it a little more continuous around the whole hemisphere,” he said. “So that’s a vortex, with its center more or less at the pole.”

  But if someone wants to see the Weather Guys get really hot under the collar, ask them about people who say that this winter’s cold refutes decades-long tracking of global warming.

  “It’s ridiculous. These are goofy things,” said Ackerman. “They won’t say in the summertime when there’s a heat wave, ‘Oh, I guess that global warming’s back!’ So, it’s total cherry picking . . . Overall the hemisphere is getting warmer every year. And that doesn’t eliminate the fact that there are still cold spots and cold snaps.”

  So, don’t pack away the pit bull’s booties just yet.