A lobe of the Polar Vortex is going to swing through Ontario just north of Michigan. The upper-air forecast gives us an easy look at this strongest winter player.

Temperatures plunged into the teens and single digits in some spots, and the snow-dusted winds are driving the wind chill below zero. The polar vortex, a swirling mass of Arctic air typically contained over the North Pole, has pushed south, driving bone-chilling temperatures into the eastern United States.

The vortex is essentially an area of low pressure in the upper layers of the atmosphere over the polar region. This vortex consists of powerful westerly winds in the stratosphere, about 10 to 30 miles about the North Pole, according to Climate.gov.

A major winter blast is stirring up dangerous conditions across the U.S. central and southern states all the way to the East Coast

This can form what is called a Polar Vortex. This isn’t anything new, it’s just a newer term. This is when the area of high pressure moves south off the pole, hence polar and the jet dips even further south with an area of low pressure,