_Timothy Birdnow

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...

Yes, the dreaded Polar Vortex rears it's ugly head again, this time with an early arrival due to the big El Nino, and thus the Global Warming gang have a new excuse for why it's so friggin cold this winter. They keep telling us the planet is warming but then we have some nasty cold snaps so they blame those on...you guessed it...planetary warming. Not that it gets cold in winter, oh no! It's cold because it's hot.

So the PV is once again resurrected, and we are told it's going to be the earliest and most sever in all of history, nay, in geological history.

The polar vortex is a fancy word for a circulating air mass around the Arctic ocean. When it is strong it holds the cold air in, but when it breaks down cold air escapes and blows down into the temperate zones and we get a nasty cold snap and often quite a bit of snow with it.

It caught the fancy of reporters, who thought it sounded big and sexy, and for a while we were always hearing about the polar vortex, as if it were some sort of monster ready to devour Mankind. They haven't talked about it in a few years, largely because the Arctic has had a low enough pressure that kept the cold air in. But the extraordinary summer in Europe was a result of low pressure in the Arctic which was sucking tropical air north, and if it happens in winter then cold air will drop down into the mid latitudes - flip sides of the same coin. The difference is the Arctic pressure has to be higher than the mid-latitude pressure for this to happen.

El Nino, that spinning ball of hot gas (sort of like Chuck Schumer) in the tropical Pacific, sucks a lot of air (well, Schumer sucks too) and so is often associated with a collapse of the polar vortex in winter. Overall El Nino heats the planet but in winter it can break down the PV and you can have some nasty cold snaps and winter storms.

Anyway, prepare yourself; you are going to be hearing a LOT about it in the coming weeks to months.

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