We also had Arctic air masses, now we have polar vortexes. Ack. Everything has been sexed up or dumbed down, or re-branded for the sake of our 'I'm bored' society.
You know the minute you say 'when I was a boy' that you are either deeply disgruntled with the present or simply frigorifically old. If you say 'when I was a boy' and you're a woman, then your problems are deeper than mine, undoubtedly a recipe for a lifetime of psycho-therapeutic couchings, and perhaps a blog, on my part. Note: not a blog on my 'part'. The comma matters.
Today we're dealing with meteorological phenomena. It's seems that the winter of 2014 has given rise to the popularity of the term 'polar vortex'. I suspect the term has been around longer than that (1853), but now it's fashionable (translation: of little real value). We all know what 'polar' means....up there, and cold, but what's a vortex? A vortex is a whirling mass of air, among other things. Here's a definition from Wikipedia (where else?):
Vortices in the Earth's atmosphere are important phenomena for meteorology. They include mesocyclones on the scale of a few miles, tornadoes, waterspouts, and hurricanes. These vortices are often driven by temperature and humidity variations with altitude. The sense of rotation of hurricanes is influenced by the Earth's rotation. Another example is the Polar vortex, a persistent, large-scale cyclone centered near the Earth's poles, in the middle and upper troposphere and the stratosphere.
Mmmmm....troposphere. And while we're at it, is is 'vortexes' or 'vortices'?
So, folks, we basically have a large mass of Arctic air dipping down into our neighbourhoods. By using the term 'polar vortex', the meteorologists are simply crying out for attention. Let's face it, their lives must be horrendously boring. In fireman terms, they basically sit around all year buffing their bumpers until a fire comes along, and they don't rescue cats from trees so their public worth is negligible. In meteorological terms, the 'fire' is a polar vortex, hurricane, freezing rain, snowstorm, flood or tornado. They are few and far between. In reality the meteorologist spends about fifteen minutes a day figuring out if it's going to be sunny or cloudy, then they play Tetris on their computer and answer a few e-mails, then they toddle off to the fire station to walk the Dalmatian...unless there's a polar vortex.
Polar vortex....sheesh.
I really don't see why the big fuss about the polar vortex. In layman's terms it's just a climatological feature that hovers near the poles year-round. It's not all that relevant since polar vortices exist from the stratosphere downward into the mid-troposphere, and I live in Toronto. Do I care that a variety of heights/pressure levels exist within the atmosphere? No, I just want dinner for under ten dollars. Do I really care that within the stratosphere, strategies such as the use of the 4 mb pressure surface, which correlates to the 1200K isentropic surface, located midway up the stratosphere, are used to create climatologies of the feature? No, not really. Furthermore, due to model data unreliability, other techniques use the 50 mb pressure surface to identify its stratospheric location, so it's not even part of a perfect science like economics. Everyone knows that at the level of the tropopause, the extent of closed contours of potential temperature can be used to determine its strength. Simple stuff for simple people. The horizontal scale of the vortex is frequently less than 1,000 kilometres, anyway.
Ian, wake up. Wake up!
Huh, what just happened?
I think you were having a nightmare.
Whew...I'm glad that wasn't real. Hey, what's it like outside today?
Delightfully frigorific. We're in the middle of an Arctic air mass.
What's that?
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