WhenPunxsutawney Phil popped upand saw his shadow on Feb. 2, a collective groan rippled across the Eastern United States, where freezing temperatures, ice and snow have cast a big chill for days.
Stillanother Arctic blast with snow and a deep freezejust arrived, along with another round of quips directed at meteorologists and scientists, challenging them to explain againhow climate change works.
"We all hear it every winter when we get a cold outbreak, or when a snowstorm hits hard," said Brian LaMarre, ameteorologist who founded Inspire Weatherafter retiring from the National Weather Service in 2025.
Winter 2025-2026:Winter in the West has been alarmingly mild. Here's why that's bad.
This winter, these Arctic blasts seem relentless for much of the nation east of the Rockies.A winter storm and blast of polar airbetween Jan. 23 and 26 affected more than 30 states and claimed more than 120 lives. Then in quick succession,a storm dumped a blanket of snow over the Southeastthat lingered for days as temperatures plunged again.
Snow covers the ground in northwest Oklahoma City, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. These photos captured the winter storm's aftermath from the sky." style="max-width:100%; height:auto; border-radius:6px; margin:10px 0;" loading="lazy" />
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Snow covers the ground in northwest Oklahoma City, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. These photos captured thewinter storm's aftermathfrom the sky.
The Truth Social account of PresidentDonald Trumpgoaded scientists about the theory he has repeatedly called into question since his second inauguration,asking "whatever happened to global warming."
It's a confounding dilemma for many folks trying to make sense of winter weather in the context of climate change, and for professionals trying to explain how we can still see record cold and snow, even in the face of a steadily warming climate.
The confusion is partly rooted in the science itself. Researchers studying the polar jet stream and the Polar Vortex that lives above it in the stratospheredon't yet fully understand all the complexatmospheric interactions that drive frigid weather outbreaks. And they haven't reached consensus about how warming in the Arctic – happening faster than most of the globe – influences the movement of these and other complex patterns.
So whenparts of Florida see snowtwice within days and Buffalo, New York comes close to breaking its record for days at 20 degrees or below, questions aren't surprising and misunderstandings are common about the differences between daily weather and long-term climate.
How historic have the 2026 winter storms been?
Many daily low temperature records were broken between Jan. 23 and Feb. 2, according to the National Weather Service, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Dozens of monthly records were broken, including 38 low minimums along a swath from Texas to New York, and 45 low maximum temperatures.
Only 15 new all-time record low temperature records were set, for either daily maximums or minimums, according to available preliminary NOAA data. However, the number of consecutive days with freezing temperatures also challenged previous records.
At Ronald Reagan National Airport in Virginia, nine consecutive days below freezing was the second longest such span on record.
In Jacksonville, Florida, the record was tied for the most consecutive days – eight – with minimum temperatures at or below 32 degrees.
The nine days at or below freezing in Central Park was the eighth longest such span on record.
Lake Erie had more ice coverage at the beginning of February than it has had in 23 years.
Warming climate will change winters
Even though records show our winters are growing warmer on average, cold winter events like the ones that caused the recent mayhem aren't going away anytime soon,an international studythatincluded U.S. scientistsconcluded in 2025.
"It seems really counterintuitive, but there will beplenty of ice, snow, and frigid air in the Arctic winterfor decades to come, and that cold can be displaced southward into heavily populated regions by Arctic heat waves," said Jennifer Francis, a senior research scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and co-author on that study.
Meanwhile, winter weather impacts could be even more significant as people become accustomed to warmer climates and grow "increasingly less used to" the cold, according to another co-author, Muyin Wang a meteorologist at the University of Washington and NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.
A polar blanket
The situation in the Arctic can be thought of like a blanket of low pressure and cold air, said Frederick Bertley, president and CEO of COSI, the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio.
Like an old blanket, it can develop holes from things happening around it and become a leaky barrier that allows low pressure and cold air to escape into the United States.
Scientists are actively researching how weather systems and climate patterns play a role in these freezing outbreaks.
"If you went back 30 years, 100% of scientists would have said climate change is going to lead to milder winters and less snow," said Judah Cohen, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
During a winter weather webinar by the Woodwell Climate Research Center, Cohen said that's an oversimplification of the influence of climate change and other patterns.
The scientists say it's important to understand the meanderings of the polar jet stream and the stretching and speed of the Polar Vortex that lives above the jet. They want to know how the systems interact within the multi-layered atmosphere, hoping to improve winter forecasts for frigid weather outbreaks.
The jet stream, a band of winds that circle the globe, is created by temperature differences between the higher latitudes and the Arctic. Existing in the troposphere some five to nine miles above the Earth, its naturally occurring undulations have always allowed Arctic air to plunge down into the U.S. Since the winter of 2013-2014, the dips of the jet stream over North America have been increasingly commonly referred to as "a polar vortex."
The Stratospheric Polar Vortex, a winter phenomenon, is positioned some 10 to 30 miles above the surface. In addition to its intermittent interactions with the jet stream, the vortex sometimes experiences sudden warming events that weaken or stop its flow and also send outbreaks of Arctic air southward.
Meanwhile, warming oceans not only contribute to moisture that piles on the ice and snow, but may also help drive some of the polar outbreaks, studies suggest. Scientists are working to understand the contributions from the rapidly warming Arctic, warmer oceans and sea ice loss.
Also not yet fully understood are the interactions with naturally occurring planetary waves and atmospheric cycles such as the Arctic Oscillation and the El Niño Southern Oscillation.
"More analysis is needed to understand how these different factors have been working together or against each other," said Laura Ciasto, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.
It's likely most of the cold events this winter have been in response to the tropospheric jet stream, "which sometimes is erroneously referred to as the polar vortex," Ciasto said. "The jet stream has been disrupted a fair bit this winter."
Just how often the stratospheric polar vortex is disrupted and takes on a role in weird weather extremes remains a subject of debate.
Cohen compares the interactions between the Polar Vortex and the jet stream as a dog and its tail, and said he sees more interaction between the two than many meteorologists acknowledge. And those disruptions, he said, favor colder weather.
A 2024 study by a group of scientists from Canada and the United Kingdomfound the frequency or intensity of midlatitude cold extremeshasn't increased, saying both have decreased since 1990 and are consistent with the trend predicted by climate models.
Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, published a recent blog post disputing "claims" he sees about unusually cold events being made worse by human activity, "as a result of increased variability or a disruption of the 'polar vortex' in a fast-warming world."
There is significant debate in the scientific community about whether rapid Arctic warming and sea ice loss could disrupt atmospheric circulation patterns and lead to cold-air outbreaks in the northern hemisphere mid-latitude regions," Hausfather wrote.
Winters still warming
Despite the misery wielded by the recent winter storms, bitter cold storms aren't occurring often enough to outweigh the long-term influence of human-caused global warming on temperatures, according toa January story by Rebecca Lindsey, a project director for Climate.us. The non-profit was created when the Trump administration stopped further publications on its climate.gov website andhalted the Fifth National Climate Assessment in 2025.
Hausfather agreed, saying the bouts of cold air aren't preventing winter from warming overall.
Climate models "overwhelmingly project" that cold extremes will continue to diminish as greenhouse gas concentrations rise, Hausfatherexplained in the Feb. 2 blog post. Even if certain patterns do occasionally transport freezing polar air southward, he said, winters on the whole are likely to be milder than in the past.
Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national correspondent for USA TODAY, covers climate change, wildlife and the environment. Reach her at dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Polar vortex cold highlights climate change questions
