That’s because the polar vortex slid off the Arctic onto North America, allowing warmer air to creep northward on your side of the globe. I remember in '21, while we had record cold in the southern US, Siberia was on fire.
This. The meme is inaccurate in that the polar vortex is in fact currently unusually strong. It’s just unusually shaped and oddly elongated. I hope the two following images show up correctly.
Strength of the polar vortex. Blue line is this winter:
Weird, we’re experiencing the opposite in Europe.
That’s because the polar vortex slid off the Arctic onto North America, allowing warmer air to creep northward on your side of the globe. I remember in '21, while we had record cold in the southern US, Siberia was on fire.
This. The meme is inaccurate in that the polar vortex is in fact currently unusually strong. It’s just unusually shaped and oddly elongated. I hope the two following images show up correctly.
Strength of the polar vortex. Blue line is this winter:
source: http://weatheriscool.com/
Map showing the mean 500 hPa geopotential height and surface (2m) temperature anomalies for this week, as forecasted on Monday by ECMW:
source: https://charts.ecmwf.int/products/extended-anomaly-multi-param?base_time=202501200000&projection=opencharts_arctic&valid_time=202501270000