The United States has been at the epicenter of the planet’s most unusually cold conditions early in 2025. The polar vortex is to blame.

The troposphere is the region of the atmosphere that our active weather is confined to, and extends up to about 40,000 feet altitude (a pressure of about 200 mb) in the tropics in summer.

However, high pressure can cause a temperature inversion. This is where a layer of air in the troposphere will be at a higher temperature than the layers of air below it. Some of the television ...

That creates high pressure in the troposphere where our weather is made. That high pressure steers the jet stream farther north. For us in the Mid-South, that weather pattern means a wetter and ...

The unusual pressure cells and jet stream pattern caused the polar vortex to be displaced to the south, closer to Hudson Bay, Canada — in the troposphere. The troposphere is the lowest layer of ...