Polar Vortex 3.0? Try 50 Degrees Below Normal!
UPDATE 11/13: Casper, Wyoming had a 50-degree-below-normal low temperature on November 12th! It's supposed to be +23 F there when people wake up; instead it was -27 F! For the day, they averaged -12 F, 47 degrees below their normal daily average of +35. Just incredible. Here are the numbers, straight out of our database:
They've had 6 days with a daily departure worse than -20 degrees. Like I said below, double digit daily departures are rare; I've never personally seen a departure greater than 30 degrees. OK, you say the weather is always crazy in Wyoming, especially in the Fall. Yeah, I looked into that. For the past 10 Novembers, the daily departures have ranged from +23 to -27, still nowhere near -47! This is what the weekly & yearly climate graph looks like -- note the temperatures nearly falling off the chart, way outside of normal (green):
Before the middle of the month, Casper has already broken it's all-time November snow! We have a new news story with an infographic:
If that ain't a Polar Vortex, I don't know what is!
ORIGINAL BLOG 11/11/14: Yes, that term "polar vortex" is back in the news (for the third time this year). If you want to argue about its appropriateness, Bernie Rayno is ready to take you on, via the video below, but please take this arctic outbreak for the serious meteorological beast that it is; see stats below.
This is such a major event, we've had graphic-upon-graphic this week to try to illustrate the rarity of this kind of cold in November.
Arguably the most important of these is this graphic, which shows some places under 40 degrees below normal! Departures of more than 20 degrees from normal are big news. These numbers are rarely heard of.
Great Falls, Montana, is forecast to get up to +5 degrees F today (they were 4 below zero this morning). Their normal high is 46! Casper, Wyoming, will see +7 if their lucky, also 41 degrees below normal. (Additional points shown in this map). At one point yesterday, as these maps show, temperatures ranged from 14 in Colorado to 87 in Oklahoma and at one point 32 to 71 across the city of Colorado Springs!
Dodge City, KS dropped from 80 yesterday to 16 F this morning and one town in Oklahoma lost 33 degrees in 3 hours!
Yes, the cold air will moderate by the time it gets to the East Coast, but even here in State College, Pennsylvania, we'll shave off 55 degrees from today's RealFeel to that of Monday morning (actual high temperatures will dip from 65 today to 32 on Monday, essentially changing us from typical early October weather to colder than the middle of January).
The craziest part though is that this cold will last... the AccuWeather.com forecast says we'll only be above 40 degrees twice through Dec. 8 (at which point our normal high will be 40 anyway).
The NOHRSC said the nation was already covered 19% by snow today, the second highest for this date in the last 10 years.
Report a Typo
