Archive Posts
5 posts
September 2026
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Welcome to the new PolarWx!
After yet another website change and a few years of inactivity, I'm bringing the blog back online - with a few updates on future plans.
November 2024
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Tropical Storm Sara: What Went Wrong?
Tropical Storm Sara is currently producing torrential rainfall and flooding across portions of Central America, and is expected to make landfall in Belize as a weak tropical storm before dissipating inland, with remnant moisture spreading into the southeast U.S. But this was not the original forecast – just a few days ago, many models were consistently showing a hurricane or…
April 2022
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Late-Season Snowstorm Set to Impact the Northeast U.S.
After a winter consisting of generally below-average snowfall in the Northeast U.S., followed by abnormally warm conditions through parts of February and March, winter is set to make a brief but notable return for parts of the region as a cyclone deepens while bringing in unusually cold air, resulting in heavy wet snow west of the storm track peaking in…
March 2022
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Tropopause Polar Vortex and the Late March Cool-Down
While glancing at the forecast for the upcoming stretch of anomalous cold weather in the Northeast U.S., I noticed that while low-level temperatures are forecast to be near record cold for this time of year, upper-level temperatures are actually forecast to be near record warmth! This may seem counter-intuitive at a first glance, but it ended up being related to…
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Bomb Cyclones: The Forgotten Latitude Weighting
Over the last few years, the term "bomb cyclone" or "bombogenesis" has become increasingly popularized within and beyond the weather community. A bomb cyclone is commonly defined as a decrease in central minimum pressure of 24 hPa or more within 24 hours. This definition, however, is incomplete. The original definition of a "bomb cyclone" from Sanders and Gyakum (1980) included…