Two words I am sick of hearing--"Polar Vortex"

     

   
     This morning I woke to an outside temperature of 10 degrees.  I don't know about you but I suddenly miss another dreaded named weather condition--- the three H's, hot, humid and hazy? Whatever happened to our normal winters when we rarely saw temperatures near single digits?  Since when did we move to Minnesota?  Speaking of Minnesota did you see that Duluth, Minnesota broke their record of days below zero in a winter with 60 days below zero this winter? I have only been in Duluth once during the Fourth of July holiday period and the temperature at the airport when we landed was 46 degrees! The people that met us joked that people in Duluth joke that they have two seasons---Winter and the Fourth of July!  With 46 degrees for the Fourth they may have to revise even that saying.
     I know that the climate change deniers will use our cold temperatures to bolster their claim that the warming of the earth is an unproven theory.  As strange as it may seem our unusually cold weather this year does just the opposite.  This is how that is explained in an article in Time Magazine recently:

 ".....not only does the cold spell not disprove climate change, it may well be that global warming could be making the occasional bout of extreme cold weather in the U.S. even more likely. Right now much of the U.S. is in the grip of a polar vortex, which is pretty much what it sounds like: a whirlwind of extremely cold, extremely dense air that forms near the poles. Usually the fast winds in the vortex—which can top 100 mph (161 k/h)—keep that cold air locked up in the Arctic. But when the winds weaken, the vortex can begin to wobble like a drunk on his fourth martini, and the Arctic air can escape and spill southward, bringing Arctic weather with it. "

     Take heart meteorological Spring starts this Saturday.