If you’re outside at the moment, in Boston, you’re doing it wrong. It’s not the off-and-on snow flurries that are troublesome; it’s the piercing cold, and how it makes your face – especially the skin around your eyeballs, nose and the top of your ears – instantly feel once you venture out into it that’s the #worst. Polar Vortex, part deux.

Except not really. A polar vortex – like the Polar Vortex of 2014 felt in Boston – is a giant bubble of wicked cold air, “typically the coldest air in the Northern Hemisphere,” which parks itself over the polar region during the winter months. What causes cities such as Boston to feel the body- and mind-numbing effects of a Polar Vortex is, what meteorologists like yours truly would call Science, with a capital “S.”

The deathly cold hovering above the arctic can, according to Accuweather.com, get pushed down as far south as the U.S.-Canadian border, the northern plains, Midwest, and unfortunately – obviously – the Northeast. For this to happen, an uberpowerful high pressure system over dominating the Pacific, ranging all the way up to Alaska, or even the North Pole, has to disrupt the Polar Vortex and cause it to funnel cold air further south. #marketexpansion

When polar-vortex colds launch in cities like Boston, they can linger for days at a time; we’re forced to adjust to the frigidness for as long as the disruptor system over the Pacific keeps growing in strength. Fortunately, the freemarket state of Earth’s atmosphere dictates this high pressure system won’t last forever; weather patterns are regulate themselves – organically. “When the strong air from the Eastern or Western Pacific weakens and falls apart, the polar vortex will retreat into place near the North Pole,” Accuweather.com states.

So in Boston, where temperatures could feel as low as -25 degrees Thursday morning, are we allowed to call this Polar Vortex 2015? Technically, no.

The International Business Times reports that the cold stream currently turning us all into walking ice zombies, at this moment, lingers about 4 to 9 miles above the Earth’s surface, pulling in frosts blast from the Artic. Since the polar vortex is located 12 miles above the surface, up by the North Pole, well, Polar Vortex 2015 isn’t a thing.

It’s cold and awful, right now. But it could be worse. #blessed

#SMH

Images/Public Domain