After sending temperatures plunging across Michigan this winter, the polar vortex has retreated.
As if we hadn’t noticed.
“We are actually on the opposite side of it, on the warmer side,” said Jaclyn Anderson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in White Lake Township. “So we’re actually going to be well above normal temperatures here through a good portion of the week.”
Finally, a warmup for Metroi Detroit that’s a sharp turnaround from the Arctic blast that sent temperatures into the single digits earlier this season. With wind chills, temperatures dipped further into minus territory.
The polar vortex, that large mass of swirling, frigid air typically around the Arctic Circle, typically stays near the North Pole. Every once in a while, atmospheric conditions that contain it weaken, causing bits of bitterly cold air to push south into the United States.
“We’re talking about this Arctic air mass that comes down,” Anderson said. “It’s essentially just like a pocket of cold Arctic air that breaks off from the flow and then moves down over the region, and everything moves across the world, across the globe. And so, essentially, right now, we’re nowhere in the vicinity of the polar vortex or anything like that.”
Is it coming back? There’s no indication of another polar vortex in the immediate forecast, Anderson said.
Rather, warmer weather is forecast across Metro Detroit through the week, with temperatures returning to seasonal averages later this week. Temperatures are expected to be in the 40s and 50s this week, even reaching the 60s on Wednesday, according to the national weather service.
But beware the end of the week. It’s no polar vortex but it will remind us that it’s still winter.
“As we go through the end of the week and especially the weekend, our temperatures are going to fall back down into the 30s, kind of cold through the near normal for this time of year,” Anderson said. “Not necessarily associated with the polar vortex or anything like that, just the colder air that’s coming down from Canada.”
The warm-up Wednesday is expected to bring with it an increasing chance for rain and a soggier middle of the week.
“Oftentimes when we get situations like this this early in the year, we also get rain that comes with these systems that moves through and brings the warmer air to us,” Anderson said.
