As your well aware we have a big system system rolling across the country from LA to Lansing this week that’s likely to produce blizzard conditions from Denver to Des Moines.

In it’s wake we get the first of 2, maybe 3 waves of Arctic/Siberian air. According to the latest run of the GFS, the 2nd wave looks strikingly similar to some of the big arctic outbreaks of the past with the threat of southern and northern branch phasing followed with a piece of the vortex rotating through the Great Lakes.

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Why a polar vortex outbreak? Lowest heights and 2m temp anomalies anywhere in the hemisphere? There’s a very nice cross polar connection showing up too, in between twin ridge cores sitting on the Canadian Arctic coast acting as a funnel.

If you look carefully at the below GFS 500mb height anomaly snap shots, we see an upper feature within the straight south flow crossing over the pole. This is seen in a ‘kink in the upper flow, on the raar of the first deep trough starting to lift out. As this upper feature heads south, all the flow behind it is cross polar which suggests substantial seeding by Siberia.

Just look at how the trough deepens dramatically as this piece drops into southern Canada.

Arctic blast No 1.

2M temp anomaly

Much stronger Arctic blast No 2.

The above solution and extremity is highly plausible based on the strong ongoing stratospheric warming.

See this morning’s video for the discussion.

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Tags: arctic outbreak 2016, cold blast 2016, polar vortex, sudden stratospheric warming event