Simon Lee @simonleewx.com · Jan 23 The extreme cold across eastern N America is due to the Alaskan Ridge regime, which on average brings the coldest winter weather to this region. Is this happening more often? No. During the modern warming era, there has been no observed trend in the occurrence of this regime at this time of year.
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In recent years, there have been extremely AKR-dominant winters (2014, 2015 and 2022), but there have also been winters where the regime was absent (2020, 2021), and generally the behaviour has not been statistically different to earlier decades.
I'm no expert, I only looked👀 at TMIN in US GHCN stations 1925-2024 from 40°N northwards. January is inconclusive. But February has a cooling trend, despite the increased warming in more extreme years. 1981-2000 were a warm-ish period. From 2001 on, cold events seem to get colder than 1981-2000. 1/
So seems like the current cold snap is just an outlier caused by unique weather patterns?