Polar Vortex is back and it's going to get ugly

If you think it's cold now, just wait until next week: Winter's favorite whipping boy, the Polar Vortex, will again rear its ugly head.

After a chilly, snowy weekend and a brief stretch of slightly milder weather early next week, the next cold blast will invade the northern Plains and Upper Midwest by the middle of the week. The frigid air will eventually make its way to the East Coast and Southeast by week's end.

The cold will be similar in scale and magnitude to the infamous January 2014 Polar Vortex, meteorologist Ryan Maue of WeatherBell Analytics, tweeted Wednesday.

The Polar Vortex is a large area of cold air high up in the atmosphere that normally lives over the poles (as its name suggests) but — thanks to a meandering jet stream — parts of the vortex can slosh down into North America, helping to funnel unspeakably cold air into the central and eastern U.S., like what's forecast next week.

Just how cold could it get? High temperatures may only reach the single digits for much of the upper Midwest, including Chicago, on Wednesday and Thursday, the Weather Channel said.

"If the GFS were to pan out, we would be in record territory for cold," the National Weather Service in Chicago said, referring to the Global Forecast System, one of the many computer models that forecasts weather.

"If you have not gotten your hats and gloves and scarves out yet ... this is time to do it," the weather service said in an online forecast.

Nighttime temperatures should dip below zero in the northern Plains and upper Midwest, while lows in the single digits and teens are likely in the central Plains into the Midwest and interior Northeast.

Thanks to howling winds, temperatures will plunge to dangerous levels over the north-central states. Wind chills in the minus 15 to minus 25 degree range are likely in Minnesota, the weather service said.

Highs are likely to be in the 30s along the Interstate-95 corridor of the mid-Atlantic during the latter part of next week, AccuWeather said. There may be a day or two where temperatures fail to reach the freezing mark from Philadelphia and New York City to Boston.

But the intense cold may not stick around until Christmas: "We expect arctic air to retreat northward around Christmastime,"  according to AccuWeather meteorologist Paul Pastelok.

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