Temperatures hit 82 degrees in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, one of the highest readings the city has ever experienced in February. And for the second day in a row, Boston set a high-temperature record for a February day: 71 degrees.
In New York’s Central Park, the temperature hit 78 degrees, the highest ever recorded in February. The milestone shattered the record for Feb. 21, which had previously stood at 68 degrees, back in 1930.
“We’re not breaking daily records, we’re breaking all-time temperature records,” said Andrew Freedman, senior science editor of Mashable.
According to Freedman, part of the explanation lies in an unusual disturbance of the polar vortex, which in the past week has split in two, producing two distinct cold waves across the globe.
“You had one portion of it moving into the Western U.S. and Canada, while at the same time one portion of it moved into Europe and Eurasia,” Freedman said. “So those are the two cold spots in the Northern Hemisphere right now. And in the eastern U.S., suddenly we had this incredible warm-up today and on Tuesday.”
Freedman explained the split in the polar vortex. “Normally, you have this circulation of fast winds in the upper levels of the atmosphere over the Arctic. Usually, it stays put; it behaves well.” But this year the planet experienced what Freedman called a Sudden Stratospheric Warming event. “You had energy from the lower atmosphere go up to the upper atmosphere and sort of knocked it off balance.”
Freedman added that climate change is also contributing to the record temperatures on the East Coast. “It’s easier for us to set these high-temperature records as the climate continues to warm,” he said. “That's the bottom line climate message overall.”
And as for what’s ahead, well, Freedman said, on Thursday, “It’s going to snow in Boston.”
Read more at [Mashable](https://mashable.com/2018/02/15/polar-vortex-split-stratospheric-warming-snow-cold-europe-us/).
The FDA has granted emergency use authorization to Pfizer's pill to treat covid-19. The treatment, called Paxlovid, is the first antiviral covid-19 pill that people can take at home.
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Carlo and Baker cover the heartening news on the Covid front ahead of the holiday, plus President Biden punting student loan repayments again, a new space telescope and Love, Hate, Ate: Christmas Eve Eve Edition!
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The airline industry says it is contending with staff shortages that threaten to hamper operations amid the COVID resurgence, andDelta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian called on the CDC to revise its guidance for vaccinated workers who test positive from a 10-day quarantine to just five. Chuck Liberman, chief investment officer and managing partner at Advisors Capital Management LLC, joined Cheddar to talk about the current guidance on isolation and why he believes the omicron variant calls for more relaxed guidance given its reportedly mild symptoms.
The boys discuss President Biden's plans to send out free rapid tests as the testing supply chain starts to buckle ahead of the holidays. Also, why aren't Americans having more babies, and The Matrix returns.
NASA is launching its new generation of space telescopes just before Christmas. The James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch on December 24th, will succeed the Hubble space telescope as the world's most powerful complex space observatory. The project has been 30 years in the making and is one of the most highly anticipated space science missions of the 21st century. Klaus Pontoppidan, astronomer and JWST Project Scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.
With Omicron becoming the dominant COVID-19 variant in the U.S., President Joe Biden announced that he will make 500 million rapid tests available to Americans in January 2022. Cheddar News speaks with Dr. Shereef Elnahal, President and CEO of University Hospital why testing is key to combatting the spread of the virus.
