Polar Vortex = Northern Jet Stream
Polar Vortex = Northern Jet Stream
Sort of.
There actually is a difference this year in the weather patterns. I explained it to my neighbor about 2 weeks ago.
I live in the Seattle area, kinda. Everyone has, I am sure, heard about the rain.
Yeah. It does rain. It rains alot sometimes.
During the winter, mostly.
9 out of 10 years the predominant thing that controls weather here is a massive low pressure system over the gulf of Alaska. That coincides with a southerly jet stream.
The effect here is called the “pineapple express”, massive incoming flows of sub-tropical warm and very moist air coming in, thus the rain.
But sometimes, nature fakes us out. Like this year.
This year, the effect is reversed, and there is a monstrous, totally dominant high pressure system over the east pacific/gulf of Alaska region.
What that means for us in the PNW is a winter that is cooler than normal, but also much, much drier. It’s been so dry here this year that some of the ski areas STILL have not opened. The air coming our way is coming down from BC instead of coming in off the warmer and wetter Pacific tropical region.
That high pressure system, and the jet stream that goes along with it, are what is causing the polar vortexes. Even a small low pressure region over the north central US or the New England region gets magnified way beyond how much effect that it would normally have.
The result there being that VERY COLD AIR, literally air that might have been directly over the north pole 24 hours ago gets funneled and fast-tracked right down towards the eastern half of the US.
It’s not unheard of, but it is true that this is not the normal pattern, where the jet stream comes into the US in the So Cal area during the winter.