Anyone who has been at State College for even just this semester are more than aware of how cold it can get. All us freshman have been told how brutal it can get and that we haven’t experienced anything yet; even those of us who are a mere 3 hour car ride away. With that being said, it has gotten pretty cold already. Last year at some point pretty much every region in the country encountered a cold snap. I have always wondered why a place that is so close to my house could have such a drastic difference in how cold winter is.

Last year was one of the coldest on record for the region for both temperature and snowfall. This was mainly due to the polar vortex which ventured southward and does so quite frequently. As you can see in this video by NASA…

…the polar vortex would make its way down from Canada through the mid-west and would get to central Pennsylvania before heading back northward to Canada and the Arctic. The reason behind the air being so frigid is that it originates in the Arctic where it is dark for almost the entire day so the air gets no sunlight and therefore has no heat to carry. Last year was a particularly cold winter for the entire northeast, mid-west, and mid-atlantic. This is because when the polar vortex journeyed down to the US, a jet stream formed and blocked the way. A jet stream is essentially a river of air at about 20,000 ft and can greatly influence air masses.

Another major contributor to the absolutely bone chilling winter of State College is the surrounding of the city. First of all, the city has an elevation of approximately 1,200 feet above sea level which means that the air is thinner and cannot trap as much heat. Also being set in the middle of the Allegheny Mountains with Mount Nittany in plain view from campus traps a majority of the cold air into the valley. When the air moves towards the mountains the lighter warm air is pushed upwards over the mountains while the cold air remains behind, stuck with all of us down here in Happy Valley. This process of the mountains blocking the cold air is often referred to as Cold Air Damming, as the mountains essentially are a dam which allows warm air to pass over trapping the cold air. Now we can all know exactly why we will be freezing while walking to class.

Sources:

http://www.livescience.com/48742-heavy-snowfall-polar-vortex.html

http://www.wect.com/story/27526780/weather-101-cold-air-damming