January 15, 2025 • 8 mins
THE VORTEX IS COMING! Starting this weekend it is going to be BITTERLY cold and I'll ask Dave Fraser about that today at 12:30 so get your weather questions ready! Here are some good tips to prepare your house for the hard freeze that is coming.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Box thirty one's chief meteorologist, Dave Frasier, Hey, Dave.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
How we doing today? Well?
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I am I have words for you, mister, because last
week you did not give me a heads up that
I was going to end up with two feet of
snow in my driveway.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
But there we were. Yeah, that, yeah, that was that.
The southern area. We were thinking maybe a one to two,
a one to three, and the wind coming up and
over these southern areas was so strong it lifted the
air and anytime you lift you can generate more snow.
And so the totals came in at around eight inches,
especially down on the south side of town. So yeah,
(00:35):
much more than was expected.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Okay, so we're about to enter into one of our
oh my gosh, bitterly cold. Your face is going to
freeze when you go outside time periods. When does that start?
Is this a true polar vortex? I keep saying that,
but I don't even know if it really is.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It is, okay, yeah, so the polar vortex. You know,
those are nice little cliche words that we'd like to
toss out every now and then. We call it an
arctic outbreak. So you know, you have the cold there
kind of like a whirlpool spinning around over the poles,
and the jet stream is like a lasso, and as
long as the jet stream is spinning at the right momentum,
(01:09):
it kind of holds all of that cold there at
the poles. But if the jet stream slows or buckles,
then the cold air releases, and that's what we're dealing with,
and that's why it's called the polar vortex, the vortex
being the circulation and the polar being the region from
which the cold there comes. So we're thinking the cold.
They will start to see thin Friday afternoon, so you
should notice the temperatures dropping. The snow will lag behind
(01:33):
that until about eight or nine o'clock, and then we'll
get into a period of light snow temperatures on Saturday
and Sunday. Their highs will be probably around seventeen to
nineteen both days, with morning lows starting out at about
two to four below, and then the coldest morning is
(01:53):
going to be Monday morning at about five to seven below,
and the highs will be right around ten or eleven degrees.
As far as snow, yeah, Bomby, and yeah, we're not
We're not looking at a ton of wind, but I'm
watching the wind forecast closely. But with the temperatures we're
thinking in the morning being near zero or below, you
don't need a lot of wind to get feels like
(02:15):
or wind chill temperatures that make it feel like it's ten, fifteen,
twenty below zero. I don't know if we'll reach the
threshold of concern as an advisory for you know, protecting
your scandal. We'll watch that closely. And as far as
the snow, the totals came down a little bit, but
I always remind people it's really not about the depth
of the snow. In this type of a cold atmosphere.
(02:37):
Any snow that falls on the roads in the side
of that bear is going to make the road slick.
So Friday night, Saturday early, Sunday night, Monday early, are
you two timeframes. I think you're looking at about one
to four the first round and about one to two,
putting us in a total over the weekend of about
two to six.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Okay, So I'm just going to spitball here. After talking
to Douglas County School superinto and it sounds like Monday,
if there's going to be a freezing cold snow type day,
even though we're not getting a lot of snow, that
might be your delayed start, or maybe some squens might cancel.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I agree. I think that's the reason. I mean overall,
I don't know that the snow is going to have
much more of an additional impact on roads. I think
the roads are going to be what they are and
we'll get accustomed to driving on them. You're never going
to be able to get the plows to scrape down
the bare pavement. Although we always joke about this, we
do have the benefit of the solar shovel so if
(03:31):
the sun's out, even if it's only fifteen degrees, it
will do a good job of on the main roads
getting that pavement cleared down. I do think the one
concern on Monday, and the reason we did alert days,
we did pinpoint whether alert days for the snow on
the roads on Saturday combined with the cold, snow on
the roads on Sunday combined with the cold, and Monday
purely for just the cold in the morning. As it
(03:52):
relates to the kids, right, I can see delays and
or cancelations.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
All right, So and that is going to last how
long we start too? And I say warm up that
I'm just back to the thirties would be nice. After that, I.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Think Tuesday very quickly. The sun will be out on Tuesday.
While we may start below zero again, that temperature will
come up very quickly with sunrise above zero, and I
do think we'll get back to about thirty two to
thirty four and then from there make our way back
to the seasonal forties for the remainder of next week.
I don't see an additional Arctic outbreak. As a matter
of fact, the long range through the twenty eighth keeps
(04:27):
us a little bit cooler than normal, but not colder
than normal, so it might be a slow progression to
get back to the forties. But overall, once we get
through this cold there, remember, because of our elevation, the
coldest are you know, kind of like syrups filling over
the edge of pancakes. We'll actually go into the Midwest,
so they will be in the deepest of the cold.
We're just going to be on the fringe, but certainly
(04:48):
cold enough to make an impact to you being out
and about this weekend.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
You know what I think I'm gonna do, Dave. I
think I'm just going to go to Puerto Rico next
week instead. That's going to be my plan. I actually
am going to Puerto Rico next week. I'll be broadcasting
from Puerto Rico. It's a long story, but I'll be
talking to you from Puerto Rico. I'll have their weather
report and we can compare weather reports next Wednesday. How
about that the.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Same Yeah, yeah, you're going down there with some your
nose that Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I am one of my favorite clients. It has a
thing down there that we're going to be talking about
next week, and I'm looking forward to it and now
really looking forward to it because now I don't have
to deal with this. We can we have just a minute.
And I know that you guys as meteorologists talk about
this stuff, but let's talk about how to harden your
home real quick against this because these you know, we
(05:37):
have freezing temperatures all the time and pipes don't burst
and things are okay. But when you're in the negatives,
then then you're in a situation where things things are
going to start to break.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, you know, you'll hear some things about making sure
your pipes are outside are just connected. Hopefully everybody at
this point in January has has went to right the
outside of their home as it relates to anything sprinkler,
So I think that's not really a concern. I think
you've got to be concerned about older homes that have
(06:06):
their you know, there's kitchen sinks or maybe a bathroom
that's on an outside wall, and the insulation in the
home isn't great, maybe the windows, maybe the windows, you know,
don't completely keep the cold there out. And in those situations,
you know, the best advice is to turn the faucet
on for a trickle during the overnight hours, just to
(06:27):
keep the water flowing. You know, rivers tend not to freeze.
They might have an ice on top of them, but
if the river is moving, the water will continue to move,
so you won't freeze the pipe. And then the other
thing you can do is you can open up your
cabinet doors underneath those sinks and let some of the
warm air from the house go in. You can certainly
bump the temperature up in the house too to combat it.
(06:47):
But again, I think those concerns are generally with older homes. Right,
newer homes of the last twenty twenty five years, with
efficient furnaces and stuff, should be able to you know,
withstand this gold. The one thing that we never know
is do we bust something underground, like right before where
you know you got flooding waters in the street because
the one hundred year old pipe running down the neighborhood
(07:08):
in downtown Denver couldn't withstand the cold. And so those
are things that you're not going to be able to
control them, right.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
I got a couple questions from the text line, Mandy,
aren't these so called polar vortex is just what we
used to call Rossby waves.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
With the waves, those are the waves. Those are the
circulation the jet streams around around the planet. So at
the poles it goes one way. In the mid latitudes
it goes the other way, and they buckle and everything
it relates to the jet streams. So the answer to that,
flat out, without getting too deep, is yes, that's what
they're called. But we've given them certain names because I
(07:42):
think it defines more directly what we're expecting. Polar vortex
sounds more like what you would expect coming this weekend
as opposed to a Rosbie wave.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Well, let me ask one more question. Would you ask
Dave if the jet stream in the southern hemisphere goes
the same direction as it does up here.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Again, jet streams go so the mid latitudes, that's us,
our storms go from west to east. Poler goes the
opposite way. And then in the southern hemisphere, same thing.
Mid latitudes are going the opposite way, and the polls
so they reverse, each one of them reverses. Okay, the
southern hemisphere is completely opposite of the northern hemisphere. Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
And a lot of people on our tech SGE are
pointing out the Monday is Mlkday. The kids will be
out of school anyway, so I don't have to worry.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
About that, right, all right, that's right, hard thing on
that one.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
There we go, all right, Dave Fraser, I will be
talking to you when you're freezing your took us off
next week from sunny Puerto Rico. So I look forward
to that, my friend.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I'll be looking for some type of a tropical servants
to see if you can't do in your plans a little.
There you go, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I appreciate that, Dave Fraser from Box thirty one. I
appreciate you, man,
Box thirty one's chief meteorologist, Dave Frasier, Hey, Dave.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
How we doing today? Well?
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I am I have words for you, mister, because last
week you did not give me a heads up that
I was going to end up with two feet of
snow in my driveway.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
But there we were. Yeah, that, yeah, that was that.
The southern area. We were thinking maybe a one to two,
a one to three, and the wind coming up and
over these southern areas was so strong it lifted the
air and anytime you lift you can generate more snow.
And so the totals came in at around eight inches,
especially down on the south side of town. So yeah,
(00:35):
much more than was expected.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Okay, so we're about to enter into one of our
oh my gosh, bitterly cold. Your face is going to
freeze when you go outside time periods. When does that start?
Is this a true polar vortex? I keep saying that,
but I don't even know if it really is.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It is, okay, yeah, so the polar vortex. You know,
those are nice little cliche words that we'd like to
toss out every now and then. We call it an
arctic outbreak. So you know, you have the cold there
kind of like a whirlpool spinning around over the poles,
and the jet stream is like a lasso, and as
long as the jet stream is spinning at the right momentum,
(01:09):
it kind of holds all of that cold there at
the poles. But if the jet stream slows or buckles,
then the cold air releases, and that's what we're dealing with,
and that's why it's called the polar vortex, the vortex
being the circulation and the polar being the region from
which the cold there comes. So we're thinking the cold.
They will start to see thin Friday afternoon, so you
should notice the temperatures dropping. The snow will lag behind
(01:33):
that until about eight or nine o'clock, and then we'll
get into a period of light snow temperatures on Saturday
and Sunday. Their highs will be probably around seventeen to
nineteen both days, with morning lows starting out at about
two to four below, and then the coldest morning is
(01:53):
going to be Monday morning at about five to seven below,
and the highs will be right around ten or eleven degrees.
As far as snow, yeah, Bomby, and yeah, we're not
We're not looking at a ton of wind, but I'm
watching the wind forecast closely. But with the temperatures we're
thinking in the morning being near zero or below, you
don't need a lot of wind to get feels like
(02:15):
or wind chill temperatures that make it feel like it's ten, fifteen,
twenty below zero. I don't know if we'll reach the
threshold of concern as an advisory for you know, protecting
your scandal. We'll watch that closely. And as far as
the snow, the totals came down a little bit, but
I always remind people it's really not about the depth
of the snow. In this type of a cold atmosphere.
(02:37):
Any snow that falls on the roads in the side
of that bear is going to make the road slick.
So Friday night, Saturday early, Sunday night, Monday early, are
you two timeframes. I think you're looking at about one
to four the first round and about one to two,
putting us in a total over the weekend of about
two to six.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Okay, So I'm just going to spitball here. After talking
to Douglas County School superinto and it sounds like Monday,
if there's going to be a freezing cold snow type day,
even though we're not getting a lot of snow, that
might be your delayed start, or maybe some squens might cancel.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I agree. I think that's the reason. I mean overall,
I don't know that the snow is going to have
much more of an additional impact on roads. I think
the roads are going to be what they are and
we'll get accustomed to driving on them. You're never going
to be able to get the plows to scrape down
the bare pavement. Although we always joke about this, we
do have the benefit of the solar shovel so if
(03:31):
the sun's out, even if it's only fifteen degrees, it
will do a good job of on the main roads
getting that pavement cleared down. I do think the one
concern on Monday, and the reason we did alert days,
we did pinpoint whether alert days for the snow on
the roads on Saturday combined with the cold, snow on
the roads on Sunday combined with the cold, and Monday
purely for just the cold in the morning. As it
(03:52):
relates to the kids, right, I can see delays and
or cancelations.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
All right, So and that is going to last how
long we start too? And I say warm up that
I'm just back to the thirties would be nice. After that, I.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Think Tuesday very quickly. The sun will be out on Tuesday.
While we may start below zero again, that temperature will
come up very quickly with sunrise above zero, and I
do think we'll get back to about thirty two to
thirty four and then from there make our way back
to the seasonal forties for the remainder of next week.
I don't see an additional Arctic outbreak. As a matter
of fact, the long range through the twenty eighth keeps
(04:27):
us a little bit cooler than normal, but not colder
than normal, so it might be a slow progression to
get back to the forties. But overall, once we get
through this cold there, remember, because of our elevation, the
coldest are you know, kind of like syrups filling over
the edge of pancakes. We'll actually go into the Midwest,
so they will be in the deepest of the cold.
We're just going to be on the fringe, but certainly
(04:48):
cold enough to make an impact to you being out
and about this weekend.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
You know what I think I'm gonna do, Dave. I
think I'm just going to go to Puerto Rico next
week instead. That's going to be my plan. I actually
am going to Puerto Rico next week. I'll be broadcasting
from Puerto Rico. It's a long story, but I'll be
talking to you from Puerto Rico. I'll have their weather
report and we can compare weather reports next Wednesday. How
about that the.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Same Yeah, yeah, you're going down there with some your
nose that Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I am one of my favorite clients. It has a
thing down there that we're going to be talking about
next week, and I'm looking forward to it and now
really looking forward to it because now I don't have
to deal with this. We can we have just a minute.
And I know that you guys as meteorologists talk about
this stuff, but let's talk about how to harden your
home real quick against this because these you know, we
(05:37):
have freezing temperatures all the time and pipes don't burst
and things are okay. But when you're in the negatives,
then then you're in a situation where things things are
going to start to break.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, you know, you'll hear some things about making sure
your pipes are outside are just connected. Hopefully everybody at
this point in January has has went to right the
outside of their home as it relates to anything sprinkler,
So I think that's not really a concern. I think
you've got to be concerned about older homes that have
(06:06):
their you know, there's kitchen sinks or maybe a bathroom
that's on an outside wall, and the insulation in the
home isn't great, maybe the windows, maybe the windows, you know,
don't completely keep the cold there out. And in those situations,
you know, the best advice is to turn the faucet
on for a trickle during the overnight hours, just to
(06:27):
keep the water flowing. You know, rivers tend not to freeze.
They might have an ice on top of them, but
if the river is moving, the water will continue to move,
so you won't freeze the pipe. And then the other
thing you can do is you can open up your
cabinet doors underneath those sinks and let some of the
warm air from the house go in. You can certainly
bump the temperature up in the house too to combat it.
(06:47):
But again, I think those concerns are generally with older homes. Right,
newer homes of the last twenty twenty five years, with
efficient furnaces and stuff, should be able to you know,
withstand this gold. The one thing that we never know
is do we bust something underground, like right before where
you know you got flooding waters in the street because
the one hundred year old pipe running down the neighborhood
(07:08):
in downtown Denver couldn't withstand the cold. And so those
are things that you're not going to be able to
control them, right.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
I got a couple questions from the text line, Mandy,
aren't these so called polar vortex is just what we
used to call Rossby waves.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
With the waves, those are the waves. Those are the
circulation the jet streams around around the planet. So at
the poles it goes one way. In the mid latitudes
it goes the other way, and they buckle and everything
it relates to the jet streams. So the answer to that,
flat out, without getting too deep, is yes, that's what
they're called. But we've given them certain names because I
(07:42):
think it defines more directly what we're expecting. Polar vortex
sounds more like what you would expect coming this weekend
as opposed to a Rosbie wave.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Well, let me ask one more question. Would you ask
Dave if the jet stream in the southern hemisphere goes
the same direction as it does up here.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Again, jet streams go so the mid latitudes, that's us,
our storms go from west to east. Poler goes the
opposite way. And then in the southern hemisphere, same thing.
Mid latitudes are going the opposite way, and the polls
so they reverse, each one of them reverses. Okay, the
southern hemisphere is completely opposite of the northern hemisphere. Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
And a lot of people on our tech SGE are
pointing out the Monday is Mlkday. The kids will be
out of school anyway, so I don't have to worry.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
About that, right, all right, that's right, hard thing on
that one.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
There we go, all right, Dave Fraser, I will be
talking to you when you're freezing your took us off
next week from sunny Puerto Rico. So I look forward
to that, my friend.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I'll be looking for some type of a tropical servants
to see if you can't do in your plans a little.
There you go, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I appreciate that, Dave Fraser from Box thirty one. I
appreciate you, man,
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
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