Not a meteorologist, but in simple terms.....when the arctic warms, the polar vortex gets pushed south, which leads to these 2-3 days of intense cold. Since the arctic is warming at a rate faster than the rest of the planet, we can expect it to happen more frequently.

Not a meteorologist, but this is the best way it's been explained to me.

Think of the jet stream as a river. When the equatorial air masses are significantly warmer than arctic air masses, the jet stream went like a river between two steep mountains, straight and fast, west to east. Cold stays north, warm stays south.

Now that the arctic has significantly warmed, the 'riverbanks' aren't as steep, and the jet stream slowed down and started to meander, like a river when it comes to a broad valley. Like a sine wave. So instead of having a clear line between warm and cold, we have a bunch of troughs and valleys. As these troughs and valleys move west to east we get a cycle of warm/cold/warm/cold/.

In the cold arctic scenario, it takes a lot more energy to move the jet stream north and south, taking days or weeks to move 200 miles. Now it happens in hours on a regular basis.

Something about the jet stream I see more often in the area forecast discussions is the jet stream getting low enough to clip the mountain tops. I don't know for sure if this is a new phenomenon or I just wasn't paying attention. Would be grateful for someone with more knowledge on to chime in on both parts.

I’m no expert on the subject but I read what experts say regarding climate change. The global warming aspect of climate change is causing bizarre weather events around the world, the planet is progressively getting warmer but that doesn’t mean it will be warmer everywhere. Look at the bizarre weather last year where much of the US, Europe and China suffered severe crop losses from drought. Some US farmland dried out so badly that the ground cracked. So the soil ecosystem was badly damaged if not killed off making that land not useful for farming. around that time 1/3rd of Pakistan was underwater. An area the size of Texas or France since they are roughly equivalent flooded in Pakistan, this was caused by severe weather and glaciers melting due to climate change.

Dumb people will say big deal if it gets a little hotter I’ll just turn on the air conditioning not understanding that plants and animals do not cope with this kind of weather. They don’t understand that global crop losses means food is more expensive today and 20-30 years from now just getting food is going to be a problem. Dumb people will say what global warming means will be able to farm areas we couldn’t before. Areas that are currently farmed probably aren’t suitable for farming without massive amounts of fertilizer, irrigation or both and much of the US is running out of water. I’m not someone who just talks about this either, I’ve taken steps to be food secure in the future.