LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Large swaths of the U.S. are about to get really cold.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
That's because an Arctic blast is forecast to sweep down through Canada and blow through the Rockies on its way to the East Coast. In some places, temperatures could plunge as low as minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit with windchill. Donald Trump's inauguration ceremony in Washington, D.C., on Monday is expected to be the coldest in 40 years.
FADEL: Joining me to talk about what to expect is Andrew Freedman, senior climate reporter at Axios. Hi, Andrew. Good morning.
ANDREW FREEDMAN: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
FADEL: So, you know, I'm already cold, and now an Arctic blast. What even is an Arctic blast?
FREEDMAN: So this is essentially a large push of air coming in right straight from Siberia over the pole through parts of Canada and then across the U.S. border - probably crossing the U.S.-Canadian border sometime later today - and then spilling southward and eastward over time, over the course of several days.
FADEL: OK. How is this different from that other winter weather phenomenon that sounds hypothermic-inducing, a polar vortex?
FREEDMAN: Yeah, so this is actually related to the polar vortex.
FADEL: OK.
FREEDMAN: So the polar vortex is really an area of low pressure that forms in the upper atmosphere - in an area of the upper atmosphere that nobody really thinks about. We don't really fly there in airplanes. It's pretty high. And it is - when it is strong, it bottles up the cold air over the Arctic. When it is weak, some of that cold air spills out.
Now, one of the unique things about this year compared to the polar vortex winter of 2013, 2014, is the polar vortex is very strong right now. But it's also stretched and elongated, and a piece of it is coming down towards the United States. And then if you look at the lower atmosphere, kind of what's happening is the polar vortex is communicating, in a way, with the jet stream, which is a phenomenon that most of us are more familiar with. So it's forcing that jet stream southward into the U.S. kind of all the way down towards Texas.
FADEL: Now, I joke about, oh, I'm so cold, but, I mean, this kind of weather can be really dangerous and really damaging, right? Already, before the Arctic blast comes, places like D.C. are having issues with freezing pipes, and other parts of the country are dealing with the same thing. What infrastructure challenges do these cold snaps present?
FREEDMAN: Yeah, we had a water main break on my street in Maryland. There is water infrastructure or electrical infrastructure that we worry about. Obviously, the power concerns with the grid in Texas and elsewhere will come up. However, the concerns aren't quite as high as they have been in the past, largely because of work that's been done since previous events. But the cold is dangerous. We are going to see quite significant windchills, quite significant danger for hypothermia and frostbite, especially in the Plains states and the Upper Midwest, particularly Monday to Wednesday.
FADEL: That's Andrew Freedman, senior climate reporter at Axios. Andrew, thank you.
FREEDMAN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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