When Super Bowl hosts New Orleans' New Orleans ahead of the big game on February 9, New Orleans' record and near-record highs were around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, it's hard to understand the city's snow-covered amount, less than two-thirds of the time The following few weeks ago.
On the first day of February, the plot aired in much of the central and eastern U.S. Perhaps not as vivid as along the U.S. Gulf Coast coast, the region was attracted by its largest snow and the deepest cold recorded. On Tuesday, January 21, a rapid snowfall swept over and the next morning, the fast-clearing temperature dropped to the cold lows on the snowflakes (more details below, detailed in the Snow and Cold Record).
The January 2025 Storm during the 20s snowfall had violent winds and temperatures in the 20s Fahrenheit sensation, which prompted the first ever blizzard warning of the Gulf Coast, resulting in at least 13 deaths and causing At least $500 million in damages. At the time of writing, the official figures from NOAA National Center for Environmental Information are still waiting.
Tensile polar vortex
This may be surprising, but the infamous “polar vortex” doesn’t actually open stores in the United States during the cold January and winter storms along the Gulf Coast. The main polar vortex is located in the stratosphere, about 10 to 30 miles, forming shapes every winter, usually around the Arctic. Sometimes, the stratospheric polar vortex splits or expels it in a way that pushes its center abnormally southward. It can also extend southward. However, the vortex requires a lower teammate to produce high-impact US winter weather.
The partner is the troposphere (or the Earth's “weather layer”), which extends up to the ground for up to several miles. In the troposphere, the descending (or grooves) and bulges (or ridges) in the jet stream can extend to the northern and southwards of North America and central Eurasia. These features are sometimes juxtaposed in a way that produces extreme winter weather without having to be higher with polar vortex.
In the Polar Vortex blog of Climate.gov on January 30, NOAA meteorologist Laura Ciasto and research scientist Amy Butler pointed out:
So far, this year is a great example of how polar vortexes always affect the weather on the surface and why we need to remember these typical effects. Polar eddy winds are much stronger than normal, but apart from some brief interactions in late December and late January, the stratosphere and troposphere are largely ignored by each other.
In mid-January to the stratosphere, the polar vortex of the stratosphere does stretch farther south (see Figure 2 below). This vortex extension is associated with several recent cold seasons, including a catastrophic winter storm centered in Texas in February 2021, which has taken away at least 290 people's lives and caused more than $25 billion in damage.
We will return to the stratospheric polar vortex – and re-understand the impact of climate change on the U.S. winter weather in the second part of these two parts.
In mid-January 2025, the slender polar vortex went south to the south and the very dry surface air in the eastern United States pushed for weeks of durability, but not particularly cold.
Once in place along the Gulf Coast, cold ground air was surpassed by the strong impulse in the jet stream, on January 21, a region of violent ascending movement along the upper coast of Mexico along the Gulf Coast. Meanwhile, crossing Mexico's near-record bay. Low levels of circulation are not particularly powerful, but it does help bring enough moisture into the snowy areas along the Gulf Coast to produce almost ideal sky-making snow.
Winter weather won't disappear anytime soon
Events like the multiple disasters in January clearly show that the worst events in winter still have to be taken seriously, even if the study agrees, the jingle of winter's bite is getting less sharp in many areas. Major assessment of the catastrophic 2021 winter storm in Texas led by Rebecca Bolinger of Colorado State University:
Even in warm climates, such cold events should be considered when assessing risk and mitigating risk plans. The magnitude of the impact associated with this event indicates a lack of preparation to be addressed.
In a 2024 paper, Russell Blackport and John Fyfe of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis highlight why North Americans, especially, should not be too optimistic about winter:
In the current climate, North America has the highest difference in winter temperatures, which is the most severe negative skew on the planet. This means that even if global temperatures rise, extreme deviations in the average are expected to continue to occur. However, due to the increase in average temperature, coupled with the change in temperature, the frequency of extreme extremes in North America will decrease, and when it occurs, their intensity will decrease.
The World Weather Attribution Project analyzes climate change that may or may not affect recent extreme weather and disasters, tending to focus on extreme floods, heat waves and other disasters that have a clear connection to warming planets. In a few studies on cold events, one person analyzed the distant cold waves in Nordic Europe in January 2024. The group estimates that climate change caused by humans may reduce the frequency of this event by five times. But they stress that complacency can have its own risks:
Climate change does not mean that cold waves will no longer occur. In fact, if the amount of risk perception and preparation is reduced, lower frequency and frequent cold waves may be more influential than in the past due to the smaller frequency of events and lower risk perception and readiness.
Given the extreme winter weather in January, investments in snow fleets in Gulf Coast may not make much sense. But as American cities grow bigger and more complex, it will avoid winter hazards across the country – even if they deal with the long-term human-induced reality of human-induced warming .
Cold record set
Among the most notable records developed in January 2025:
The coldest temperature for any date, All on Wednesday, January 22:
- Louisiana New Iberia*: 2°F (Old record 17°F, January 17, 2018; data since 1948)
- Lafayette, Louisiana: 4°F (Old record of 9°F on December 23, 1989; data since 1893)
- Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport, Louisiana: 7°F (Old record of 8°F on December 23, 1989; data since 1930)
- Jennings, Louisiana: 7°F (old record of 9°F on February 12, 1899; data since 1897)
*On Thursday, February 6, New Iberia soared to 82°F, recording its warmest temperatures on any date in the first half of February.
The biggest snowfall on any date, All on Tuesday, January 21:
- Beaumont-Port, Texas: 4.5 inches (Old record from 12 to 13 February 1960 4.4 inches; data since 1901)
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, Louisiana: 8 inches (Old record of 2.7 inches on December 31, 1963; data since 1948)
- Alabama phone: 7.5 inches (Old record from 14 to 15 February 1895 6 inches; data since 1881)
- Pensacola, Florida: 8.9 inches (Old record from 14 to 15 February 1895 3 inches; data since 1880)
A station near Pensacola reported 10 inches of snow. If confirmed, this would beat the state's previous snowfall record in Milton. From February 14 to 15, 1895, it was reported that 20 inches of snow had been dumped in Houston and 10 inches in Audubon Park in New Orleans.
It's not a particularly snowy January for most parts of the United States. In fact, according to climatologist Brian Bretschneider, its data dates back to 85, ranking at the lowest 20% of snowfall in January. Although early analysis shows that January is the warmest throughout the planet, this month is indeed a relatively cold American January, it has been recorded since (see Bretschneider Embedded Blues Post below).
Jeff Masters contributed to this article.
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