Polar vortex brings dangerously cold temps to MN

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — Our entire region is under an Extreme Cold Weather Warning until 12 p.m. Tuesday; wind chills could fall as low as -45 degrees.

This Arctic blast is thanks to a polar vortex. 

“We live on this big blue marble called Earth and at the top and the bottom you have spinning air — a vortex — and that air at the top and bottom, North and South Pole, is very cold. So that’s your polar vortex. That’s what the polar vortex is,” explained KARE 11 meteorologist Jamie Kagol. 

So what does that have to do with Minnesota? 

“That polar vortex when it’s spinning, and it’s spinning fast like a top, it’s very stable, very steady. It’s not moving anywhere. But if it weakens and it will weaken… everything weakens and strengthens. As it weakens, it can wobble. When it wobbles, just like that top, it can slide off the pole… slide off the North Pole and it moves into the mid-latitudes, the Great Lakes region, the Upper Midwest. It can move all the way down… Mid-Atlantic, people in Florida can feel it, people in Texas can feel it,” Kagol said. 

RELATED: WEATHER: Arctic air grips region

This polar vortex prompted then President-elect Donald Trump to announce his inauguration ceremony would be moving indoors to the Capitol Rotunda. 

“We are seeing temperatures near freezing along the Gulf Coast, along the Atlantic Coast. So they are really feeling it. Whereas, for us, we say it’s just cold or it’s colder. But down there, they’re not equipped as well as we are to handle weather like this,” Kagol said. 

As for Minnesota, Kagol went on to say, “I was looking at the coldest temperatures of the winter, the past five years or so, and we’re kind of in the norm right now.”

According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, an arctic blast in January 2014 led to a -63 degree wind chill reading at Grand Marais Airport on Jan. 6. That same day, the lowest wind chill temperature in the Twin Cities was -48 degrees. 

Five years later, at the end of January 2019, the state experienced some of the lowest air temperatures since 1996 and lowest wind chills since the ’80s, according to the DNR. 

2021‘s polar vortex was known more for its length and lateness in the season, lasting for at least a dozen days in February. 

Kagol said Tuesday will start out bitter cold but then we will start to recover from this arctic plunge in temperatures. You can read the weather team’s full forecast, here. 

“This winter should include more polar vortices. So this is just kind of the worst we’ve had so far and I think we’re going to see more repeat itself as we go through February. Even in the short range models are showing a number of these clippers that come in from the Northwest. They’re going to pull that Arctic air south. They’re going to pull that polar air south,” Kagol said. “So this has been the worst so far, in terms of your low temperatures. We’ve seen teens below 0. We have not seen that yet. In fact, it’s been a few years since we’ve seen teens below 0 but I think this is just the first one and I think we’ll find a number of them coming up.”