Bitter cold grips Rochester. How long will it last?

The bitter cold gripping the Midwest has finally made its way to Rochester, with single-digit morning temperatures greeting us on Thursday morning.

Those cold temperatures caught widespread attention not just through the local weather but in sports circles as well, with the Chiefs and Dolphins playing in minus 4 degree temperatures with a minus 27 degree windchill, the third-coldest kickoff windchill ever.

Why is it colder in Rochester NY?

After the second-warmest December on record in Rochester, the frigid air comes as a bit of a shock. AccuWeather senior meteorologist Tom Kines said the cold snap, which moved into the middle United States last week, was in line with conditions last winter.

“This will rival the arctic outbreak leading up to Christmas of 2022,“ Kines said. “ … For most places in the Northeast, this will be the coldest air so far this season, even though it won’t be as brutal as it is in the middle part of the country.”

The forecast through Sunday calls for below freezing high temperatures through Sunday, with highs falling back into the teens on Saturday.

AccuWeather doesn’t anticipate the bitter cold sticking around for the remainder of the winter, however, Kines said. “Eventually the pattern will probably (return) more to what it was before, where a lot of the cold air stays bottled up in Canada,” he said.

It’s an El Niño winter, which typically results in warmer and drier conditions across the northern United States and while the intrusion of arctic air may be chilling, conditions are expected to return to their milder state.

“That’s not to say that there can’t be other cold intrusions later in the winter, because there likely will be,” Kines said. “This much below normal temperature pattern, we just don’t expect (it) to continue deep into the winter.”

Rochester NY weather: Is this a result of the polar vortex?

The polar vortex is cyclical high-altitude winds that blow counterclockwise around the pole experiencing winter in the stratosphere, the next layer of atmosphere above the lowest, the troposphere. It’s the subject of the Polar Vortex Blog, which is written by NOAA research scientist Amy Butler and NOAA meteorologist Laura Ciasto.

As those experts indicate in their initial post, the polar vortex is not synonymous with a cold snap. In fact, the stratosphere is 10 to 30 miles above the earth’s surface and above the polar jet stream and other systems that create most weather patterns.

When the polar vortex is disrupted from the winter hemisphere pole where it keeps cold air trapped, it can split in two or move from its typical location. The polar jet stream will sometimes mirror this disruption, bringing cold air further south, while drawing warm air into the Arctic.

A Polar Vortex Blog post from Jan. 16 acknowledged the first large intrusion of Arctic air into much of the United States and Ciasto and Butler said the polar vortex has been acting “squirrely,” with disruptions happening near the mixing point of the stratosphere and troposphere. It hasn’t been enough to reverse the winds of the vortex (which typically blow west-to-east) but typically indicates warming in the mid-stratosphere.

Butler and Ciasto said the polar vortex is likely to quickly recover from the warming, which would create conditions for disruption, and return to its typical pattern and wind speeds, but its impact could linger on the surface.

“This doesn’t automatically mean more cold air outbreaks like we’ve seen this week, but gives us a heads up that the risk of these events is slightly higher in the weeks to come,” the Jan. 16 blog post said.

More: 'We are in an official snow globe.' Weather Channel meteorologist Jordan Steele in WNY for snowstorm

More: Buffalo weather, injuries complicate Bills preparation for playoff game vs Chiefs

— Steve Howe covers weather, climate and lake issues for the Democrat and Chronicle and has run outside in single-digit temperatures before. Have any insight into changing weather or climate? Share with him at showe@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Bitter cold grips Rochester NY. How long will it last?