It is hard to say that we're closing in on winter. Cold air has been tough to find so far this fall season. Now, in early November, with temperatures reaching record warmth in some areas of the U.S. and the short-term forecast still suggesting warmth, cold air is far off many people's minds.

But that doesn't stop weather pages on social media from hyping up changes in the weather pattern. They basically need changes in the pattern to drum up clicks and views. My feeds have been littered with talk of the earliest polar vortex split on record and the coming burst of cold air that is to follow. This is being displayed by a lot of "armchair meteorologists," but also talked about by reputable forecasters as well.

There is some merit to their chatter. Indeed, we are currently seeing the developing stratospheric polar vortex split into two pieces, about 20 miles above the Earth's surface. One portion of it is moving down into Russia and the other is moving into Canada. A high-pressure heat ridge is splitting the vortex into two and will be building over the North Pole during the next couple of weeks, reversing the winds around the North Pole. These sorts of events, dubbed "Sudden Stratospheric Warming" or SSW events, often lead to major disruptions to the tropospheric polar vortex, which would change the weather pattern across the Northern Hemisphere, sending blobs of cold, arctic air southward into the mid-latitudes. This process usually takes two to three weeks to complete, putting a timetable of around Thanksgiving for looking for a burst of cold air to come down from the North Pole. This is extremely early and is the earliest such event in our very short history of stratospheric observations. Most SSW events occur during the second half of winter and into early spring. Such an event may cause people to be concerned about an early burst of winter cold.

However, there are several issues that any cold air will have to battle through. The first is that El Nino is firmly in control of the weather pattern over North America and is not forecast to relent any time soon. An upper-level ridge across North America and an upper-level trough across Alaska and the Aleutian Islands are the primary features during this pattern. The ridge keeps temperatures above normal while the trough supplies the storms. With storms coming off of the Pacific Ocean instead of from the Arctic, this usually leads to continued above-normal temperatures across most of North America, though areas across the Southern U.S. could end up colder than normal due to precipitation and clouds. El Nino will continue to feed this type of pattern at least through all of November, and its strength is likely to make this pattern very persistent through the winter season. Disruptions will occur, and this SSW may be one of them, but it will need a big push of cold air that seems to be lacking across the Arctic.

Indeed, temperatures all across Canada and Alaska are above normal and are forecast to be so during the next two weeks. Any sources of cold air don't really exist outside of Siberia. And even there, temperatures are forecast to rise above normal next week. Temperatures are too warm over most of the Arctic regions to be a significant source region for cold. It is too early in the season to do so.

Those factors may be the reasons why long-range models do not display this SSW event as having much of an impact on the tropospheric polar vortex. Instead, the event occurs largely in the stratosphere and then reverses back to a strong stratospheric polar vortex by the end of November without much response in the troposphere. If there are any indications, it would be for Europe and Asia to see the effects of the SSW, and not North America.

It would be foolish for a meteorologist to completely ignore what is the earliest SSW in our short, recorded history from having any impact -- we will be watching for disruptions in the models during the coming weeks. An early cold blast in late November or early December resulting from this SSW event is going to have some major headwinds to overcome and is not likely.

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John Baranick can be reached at john.baranick@dtn.com

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