Polar Vortex will soon put an end to our mild start to winter

It goes without fail that at least 75 to 90 per cent of video chats with my family on the U.S. west coast have had a portion of it dedicated to “How’s your weather?”

My response has been, so far we have gotten off pretty easy. We’ve had a mild but slightly snowier December, where the snow didn’t really stick around on the ground for too long, in addition to a mild start to 2021. Well, that is all about to change.

There are some signs pointing to this, and the cold air will be finally showing up in southern Ontario for an extended stay at the end of the month.

 

The Polar Vortex typically resides over the poles, but because of Stratospheric Warming, a period that we have been going through lately, this has relaxed the typically tight upper air circulation that keeps it in place.

So yeah … the Polar Vortex is coming for us.

When that circulation around it eases off, we start to see chunks of that bitterly cold air sinking further south, and North America is a prime candidate to receive that air. What is means is it is about to get a lot colder and the lake effect snow machine is about to fire up.

 

Ice coverage on the Great Lakes is running very low for this time of the year, in fact at last check, it was less than 3 per cent of the total lake surfaces. Why is this important? When the tap opens on the cold air, it is going to be running across very open and very warm water in the Great Lakes.

These are two pretty important ingredients for massive lake effect snow squalls. Hopefully ski areas are open by then in Ontario to benefit from this.

Here’s everything you need to know about lake effect snow.

So, how cold are we talking?

It will likely be what we consider our typical colder winter weather. We may see some -20’s around Southern Ontario for a few mornings and daytime highs struggling to get into the minus single-digits.

The cold winter days we have come to know around here. The big question is how long is this spell going to last for? At this point it is too tough to tell just yet, but I would dig out the full winter gear and your big parka and boots for the last week of January and the first week of February, and could last longer is the blocking pattern is very strong, but at this point…It is wait and see. Stay warm.