Who knew? The polar vortices are the two strongest and largest "storms" on the planet. These continent scale storms are 600 miles across with winds raging at 300km per hour. Simon Clark is doing (or has done) a PhD in polar vortexes. He describes how each winter they form high over the poles. These are stratospheric, circling far above jet streams and planes. The tight circular pattern keeps the coldest air corralled. But every now again, the neat circle falls apart. In the polar stratosphere sometimes temperatures warm in days by stupid amounts, like 50 degrees C. It's called a Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) and one started around Christmas time.
As Clark describes it, these are easily the most violent weather events on the planet. (They sound fascinating). As with unbalanced centrifuges, when things unravel, as the high speed system unravels, the arctic cold could spin off anywhere — this week it's the US, but Europe and Russia are often targets too. There is a lag involved — after an SSW it may take two weeks for things to hit the fan on the surface, so to speak. Generally, when an SSW hits it presages a brutal winter with outbreaks [...]
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2RurNaq
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