Return of bitter winter cold

A new wave of nasty winter weather has caused schools across the U.P. to close their doors for yet another day, and there’s no guarantee of an end any time soon.

Weather patterns formed by upper level ridges continue to sweep through the region, producing high pressure systems and higher temperatures. Troughs ushering in low pressure systems and lower temperatures are hitting the area simultaneously, resulting in what you see and feel outside. For most of this year’s winter, the Great Lakes region has been under the shroud of an upper level trough, which has opened the door for low pressure systems to move in with colder arctic air.

“If you have a lot of low-pressure systems that come through, you’ll get more frequent times when that colder air will come down, so we’ve been fortunate, I guess, or unfortunate depending on how you look at it, to see colder temperatures like this,” National Weather Service meteorologist Megan Dodson said.

Marquette County has already seen almost 40 more inches of snow than last year, and Houghton has seen an additional 50.

There’s also no guarantee that we won’t boomerang back to the cold after things warm up a bit later in the week, so as long as that trough keeps hanging over our heads, the cold is going to stay.