Polar Vortex
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Can we get a layer on a map that shows where the current polar vortex is situated and a forecast where it's going from the pole?
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@marcrnsm
This is an excerpt from Polar vortex article by @Jari-Sochorová in Windy:“Polar Vortex on Windy
You can easily view outbreaks of cold polar air in Windy in the Temperature or Wind (surface) layers. These views show where the cold air is coming from, how it spreads into the mid-latitudes, and allow you to switch on additional layers such as Clouds, Rain, thunder, or New snow. This gives you a much more complete picture of how the cold-air outbreak will affect the weather in your area.If you are interested in the polar vortex itself, switch to higher levels of the atmosphere and display, in the same layers, for example, 150 or 10 hPa. In the standard atmosphere, the 10 hPa level corresponds to an altitude of roughly 30 km (19 mi) above sea level, i.e., the boundary between the middle and upper stratosphere. For more precise information about the altitude at each pressure level, select Geopotential height in the isoline settings.”
Note this picture of the stratospheric polar vortex is a screenshot from the Windy browser version (3D) not from the mobile app.
If you want a tropospheric polar vortex picture and forecast, set the altitude slider at 300hPa or 250hPa. -
@idefix37 Yeah this doesn't work very well in the mobile app which is very disappointing. The inability to zoom far out to actually see the polar regions as well as most North America doesn't help very much. The color gradient looks more impressive in the pictures from the online app.
The snow forcast is VERY lacking as well, I haven't found a good way to see what "new snow" amounts will look like forecasted days away. Snow depth kind of works, but it's not giving a day by day accumulation of new snow.
One says 7" inches and one says .10 inches -
@marcrnsm
It is not possible to have the same features on a mobile phone and on a computer. -
A split event in polar vortex is forecast(ed) for 8 Feb. 2026
We'll keep an eye on it!
Also we can track for sudden stratospheric warming,
here: https://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/P.S. The warming is called a "Minor Warming", when the polar temperature increases more than 25 degrees in a period of a week or less at any stratospheric level.
https://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/readme.html -
Updated data (12 Feb. 2026)
