{"id":7258,"date":"2014-01-24T19:19:43","date_gmt":"2014-01-25T00:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=7258"},"modified":"2024-07-02T14:35:32","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:35:32","slug":"polarvortex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=7258","title":{"rendered":"Caught in a bone-chilling \u2018river of wind\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"river_of_wind_650\"<\/a>Chip Konrad has made a career tracking what he calls \u201cweather and climate extremes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week got his full attention.<\/p>\n

As a graduate student at the University of Virginia in the late 1980s, Konrad did his master\u2019s thesis on \u201ccold-air outbreaks\u201d like the kind that enveloped most of the country last week.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like the rest of us, it was the first time he heard the media use the term \u201cpolar vortex\u201d to explain how cold air that should be hovering around the North Pole ends up in North Carolina.<\/p>\n

\"Konrad\"<\/a>
Konrad<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI think of a polar vortex as a strong, counterclockwise wind that circulates over the Northern Hemisphere and makes a big loop around the polar region,\u201d said Konrad, associate professor of geography in the College of Arts and Sciences, who also serves as director of The Southeast Regional Climate Center in Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can also think of it as a river of wind,\u201d he said. \u201cLike everything in the atmosphere, the air in a polar vortex is in continual flux and changing. You can think of that state of flux as waves of air with crests and troughs,\u201d Konrad explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen these waves get really big, they can break and form a mini vortex, which is what happened here. Over the course of four or five days, the mini vortex tore through Canada into the eastern United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the Sunday afternoon before the vortex plowed through North Carolina, the temperature at Raleigh-Durham International Airport reached 62 degrees, Konrad said. By Tuesday morning, the temperature at RDU had plunged to 9 degrees.<\/p>\n

To put last week\u2019s event into historic perspective, Konrad did a little research and found that last Monday \u2013 Jan. 6 \u2013 was the coldest day of the 21st century across the continental United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is easy to think, \u2018Wow, that was really amazing,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cBut another way of looking at it is that there were 39 days that were actually colder \u2013 and all of those days occurred in the 20th century.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is obviously a very strong outbreak \u2013 the strongest this century \u2013 but it is the kind of weather event that occurred more often in the 20th century, and you can associate that pattern with this long-term period of warming that we have been experiencing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat part is real clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Gary Moss, University Gazette<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou can also think of it as a river of wind,\u201d he said. \u201cLike everything in the atmosphere, the air in a polar vortex is in continual flux and changing. You can think of that state of flux as waves of air with crests and troughs,\u201d Konrad explained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-sciences-mathematics","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7258"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46433,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7258\/revisions\/46433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}