WeatherBlog 4 2019/20 | Up and down with the west slide

Current situation and outlook

The polar vortex, the fickle engine of our winter weather, currently has two fairly pronounced centers, one in the Greenland/NE Canada area and one opposite in Siberia. For the USA and Canada, this results in the now familiar pattern: very cold and snowy in the eastern half, mostly dry and very warm in the western half as far north as possible.

The events in the Atlantic are decisive for our weather. Thanks to the polar vortex, persistently cold air from the polar region is pumped southwards between Greenland and Canada. The meeting of cold air and comparatively warm seawater promotes the development of low pressure there. This in turn creates the strong westerly current over the Atlantic. Embedded in this, new frontal systems reach us one after the other, which are interrupted in between by short windows of sunlight.

Medium-term

The signals from the crystal ball are still unclear. In principle, the active Atlantic will continue, but this also means that the battle between the Azores High and the Atlantic troughs in the westerly drift will continue. If the Azores High manages to bulge a little more, the westward slide will be halted relatively quickly. The European model (and to a lesser extent the American model) currently sees a very winter-unfriendly "much too warm & dry" option for next week, but let's just hope that the weather spirits change their minds.

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous things that the WeatherBlog has seen on the internet and found interesting:

Animated graph of global warming since the 1950s as a function of latitude.

Graphic by Twitter user @g_fiske, which, like the animation above, shows that the Arctic is getting warmer much faster than other regions.

And: meditative, dark scrolling through the deep sea to the ocean floor! If you do this before you go to bed, you might dream of deep-sea fishing.