The latest Arctic blast that has pummeled large swathes of the nation and reduced the South to a quivering, freezing standstill is visualized in a beautiful GIF from the data website ‘Earth’.
The hypnotic animation is created from weather forecast data from the Global Forecast System that is then put through supercomputers and the lines represent both the wind speed and its temperature from January 26 through to Wednesday morning.
The swirling lines rushing from the northwest down to the south are color coded, with the lighter purple and pink shades denoting the frigid temperatures that have battered the nation over the past three days.
+2Beautiful: This stunning animation shows the blast of polar winds that have come from the Arctic that caused such chaos in the South on Tuesday and Wednesday. The pink bars can be seen to have pushed the greener bars of the Gulf Stream from Mexico southwards – affecting the United Kingdom (top right of image)
One fascinating aspect of the animation is that the Arctic blast can clearly be seen to have pushed the jet-stream that usually comes up from the Gulf of Mexico southwards of where it usually is.
This in turn has allowed frigid air from the high north to rush south and flood the nation with record breaking low temperatures not seen in a generation.
+2Satellite: This corresponding image from NASA taken on Tuesday shows the huge frigid mass of the Polar Vortex that has penetrated southwards over the United States to bring record low temperatures to the nation and cause chaos in the Deep South
Conversely, because of the cold air being pushed south, warm air was displaced north to Alaska which resulted in unusually warm temperatures with at least seven record high temperatures for January experienced in recent days.
For example, Nome reached 51°F (10.6°C) yesterday, beating the former record of 46°F (7.8°C) set on January 7, 1942 according to Discover Magazine.
Indeed, because of the re-setting of the Gulf Stream the United Kingdom – which depends heavily on the warming effect of the weather system – can be seen to be affected by the severe low pressure – leading to the recent spate of cold and stormy weather there.
Hypnotic animation of Earth shows how the freezing Polar Vortex has penetrated so deep into North America it has pushed the Gulf Stream south
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