Winter’s so uncool, let’s say polar vortex

Winter is well and truly here, only nowadays the preferred word appears to be polar vortex, indicating a monstrous, scary snow-swirl instead of a routine seasonal froideur. It is almost as if calling a season by its expected name is a let-down, a diminution of the privations that drops and rises in temperature — and resultant precipitation forces people to endure.

Calling it a polar vortex, however, imbues all efforts to ward off icy weather with a certain heroism, harking back to the days when northern hordes swept in, making even the act of layering on the woollies akin to brandishing a sword. It is not surprising at all, therefore, that along with heat-inducing El Niño, polar vortex has become the favourite weather whipping boy, despite being merely a spinning expanse of cold air high over the North Pole that inevitably gets sucked lower down into the northern hemisphere due to the jet stream, causing freezing temperatures and blizzards. And that’s what is also called an “extreme weather event” today.

But the polar vortex has been tormenting Earth’s northern regions for well over four billion years though it reached media platforms relatively recently — over the last decade or so. Perhaps if such phrases are not bandied about quite so much, weathering extreme but expected oscillations of temperature would become less of an ordeal.