A Beautiful View Of The Polar Vortex From 18,000 Feet

Cameron Beccario/earth.nullschool.net 
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/19/a-beautiful-view-of-the-polar-vortex-from-18000-feet/?wpisrc=nl_wnkpm&wpmm=1

A Beautiful View Of The Polar Vortex From 18,000 Feet

This is why everyone in the eastern part of the country is complaining about the cold. It's a visual representation of current temperature and windspeed at an altitude of about 18,000 feet, showing frigid (purple) air pouring into the country from the north. It comes from the website Earth, built by developer Cameron Beccario. It's worth clicking through to watch the beautiful animation of the wind movement, and to check out conditions at different elevations. The website pulls in data from government sources and is updated in real-time.

As the Capital Weather Gang pointed out today, this year's vortex is pulling in air not just from the Arctic, but all the way back from Siberia. Tomorrow morning temperatures will likely be below minus twenty degrees across a wide swath of the country.

And while it may be tough for those of us on the east coast to imagine, record lows here are happening in conjunction with unseasonably warm weather on the other side of the country, as the map below shows.

The coldest outbreak of the season is pushing south into the eastern United States this week. Temperatures will be running as low as 30 to 40 degrees below normal across the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic on Friday morning. Thursday night’s departure from normal temperatures is shown above in Celsius. (tropicaltidbits.com via Capital Weather Gang)

We should start to see some relief this weekend. Until then, bundle up!

Christopher Ingraham writes about politics, drug policy and all things data. He previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center.