There’s a special kind of dread that creeps into your chest when you see meteorologists argue online. It’s like watching two doctors disagree over an X-ray of your lungs — you’re not sure what’s happening, but you know it’s probably bad for you.
Right now the argument is over whether La Niña or the polar vortex is going to dictate America’s winter, and it sounds less like science and more like a custody battle.
Judah Cohen — one of the smartest winter guys in the game — says the atmosphere is at a “critical juncture.” When a climatologist uses phrases like that, you pay attention. When that same climatologist says the stratosphere might heat up in a way it never has in November? You stop scrolling TikTok and read the whole thing twice.
Sudden stratospheric warming is one of those weather phenomena that sounds like it should make things pleasant. Warmth up high! Maybe a beach day? No. It’s the opposite. It’s the atmosphere pulling a prank on us. The stratosphere heats up, the polar vortex gets shoved south, and suddenly someone in Cleveland starts shoveling snow with a pizza box because the real shovel is in the shed under a drift.
And here’s where things get interesting for me personally.
I spent four years — FOUR — convinced I was destined to become a meteorologist. I thought I’d be the guy pointing at a green screen, confidently telling people what was going to happen. Turns out, weather involves math. Shocking amounts of math. Nobody mentioned that part when I signed up. So I ended up on the radio instead, where my forecast accuracy improved dramatically because my standards dropped to “eh, probably cloudy.”
What I’m saying is: I admire the people who do this for real. And when they say this winter could go one of two ways — either bone-cold and snowy or surprisingly mild — I nod politely because that’s the same forecast I gave every day in 1993.
But the part that’s hitting closer to home lately is the wind. New Jersey wind has been acting like it’s training for a strongman competition. Last week I drove down the shore for work, crossed the bridge over Raritan Bay, and the gusts slapped my car around like I owed them money. Fifty-mile-an-hour crosswinds on a bridge is not an experience that builds character — it builds tension in your shoulders that stays there for a week.
And I knew I had to drive back across later, which turned the whole workday into a countdown to my next white-knuckle performance.
It all reminded me of Michigan — specifically the Mackinac Bridge, which is basically the Olympics of terrifying wind events. When I first started out in Detroit media, a woman from our area died when her Yugo went over the bridge. People said the wind blew it off, and that story stuck in every Michigander’s head. Later investigations showed it was a mix of speed and conditions, not wind alone, but the legend was already baked into local lore. And when you grow up hearing that, any bridge plus wind becomes an automatic “hands at 10 and 2” situation.
So yeah — when forecasters start talking about the polar vortex maybe making a dramatic entrance because the stratosphere is warming like it’s sitting under a heat lamp, I pay attention. The atmosphere is moody, and when it gets moody, we get cold snaps, surprise snowstorms, and the kind of winds that make you reconsider your life choices while crossing a bay.
The real question is whether the cold air will punch through to the surface or whether the whole thing short-circuits and leaves us with a mild season. Cohen says it can go either way. I say Google probably already knows the answer because Google always knows before the rest of us. Their weather app has ruined more barbecues than any human meteorologist ever has.
Whatever happens, I’ll be watching — from the ground, far away from any weather maps that require calculus. And if the winds pick up again, I might even take the long route home.
At least that one doesn’t involve a bridge judging me.