The Polar Vortex!!

A wild week of weather continues here in the Northern Hemisphere: cold, cold rain, really, really cold, slightly warmer, freezing mist and now cold rain to be followed by really warm rain to wrap a brutal 8 day run.
The dipping of bitterly cold, dry air from the north pole, the Polar vortex, gripped North America to a severity and depth that had not been felt in close to 20 years. Canada and the northern tier of the US had temperatures well below zero with wind chills in the 40's and 50's below for most of this week and even deep into the south temps dropped low enough to freeze pipes in Atlanta. Records fell and cities shut down, schools closed and folks hunkered down, most realizing cold of this nature could prove damaging or deadly in a short period of time. Every state in the US had temperatures below freezing this week and close to half the country has snow on the ground.
Tomorrow, temperatures may break record HIGHS for January with inch plus rainfall totals in much of Virginia. Below zero to near seventy in a one week. Ya gotta love this planet!!  Today's freezing and then just cold rain will be replaced with warm unstable air from the toastier regions of the planet and bring a chance of thunderstorms for Saturday. The rain will mostly be gone Sunday with sunny and average-ish temps for this region (and much of the US) as the polar vortex returns home.
As small, closed minds decried global warming after a short cold spell, the southern hemisphere, well into summer, is sweltering with heat and dry times. A reminder that's it's GLOBAL WARMING and a long term climate trend, not a political concoction to rein in unbridled human greed heads. Glaciers are shrinking as their ice melts in most places on Earth, sea level continues to rise in response to more liquid water being added to the ocean basins. Ice melts when it gets warmer, the basic facts are simple and straightforward; Earth has no politics but just keeps on being and changing.
It's cold and wet today but still a pretty nice place...so, get out and enjoy your life, today on Earth.