A cold wave in February of 2021 resulted in America’s most expensive winter ever, according to the NOAA.
It also greatly impacted states like Texas, resulting in 125 deaths, and left 10 million people with no power.
The last February that was that cold was 30 years prior.
What caused this to happen?
A dip southward in the jet stream.
The jet stream is a band of strong winds that sits 8 miles above the surface of earth. It influences the boundary between cold and warm air.
The jet stream moves east to west, but it can go in other directions, like north and south. This is how Texas was given such cold weather it typically would not have had.
The changes that happen in other areas are caused by a ripple effect happening in the jet stream.
The Arctic continues to warm at a rapid rate, and this is having an effect on the weather in the rest of the world.
The changes in snow and ice in the Arctic reflect back up to the atmosphere where the jet stream is, and causes the vortex to weaken and stretch over more surface area.
The stretching causes a lot of changes in the winds, including the southward dip over the United States, which ends up pulling Arctic weather all the way down to Texas.
This shows that while people feel like they can’t see global warming happening, it doesn’t mean that it’s not.
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