Still winter, alas

Tony Wood, weather columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, has an article about what's coming:

After reading Alfred Lubrano’s story in Friday’s Inquirer about the endangered funding for a heating program for the elderly, the latest outlooks for next week are particularly chilling.
Forecasters have shaved off a few degrees and speeded up the timing of the next cold-air invasion. After temperatures reach the mid-forties on Monday, they are due to fall below freezing Monday night, and then not get out of the twenties the rest of the workweek.
All indications are that the once obscure “polar vortex” is going to get at least fifteen more minutes of fame. As we’ve noted, it’s a swirling mass in the upper atmosphere when the winter sun disappears, and typically has two Arctic centers, one near Baffin Island and the other over Siberia.
Now and then the vortex is nudged far southward and invades the United States with bitter cold, as happened last week, and is poised to do next week. The vortex is not new. It’s been swirling away for millennia, first appearing in the American Meteorological Society’s glossary over fifty years ago.
NBC10 meteorologist Glenn 'Hurricane' Schwartz said that in the not-so-old days he was advised never to use such a technical term on the air. Times have changed. What might be different about this particular cold spell is that no truly mild air is on the horizon.
The government’s Climate Prediction Center continues to paint half the country blue in its two-week outlook (chart, above).
In an outlook he posted recently, Dave Tolleris at wxrisk.com called for the cold to persist through the first week in February.
As for snow, nothing big is on the near-term horizon, so be skeptical of anything you hear about the weather for 2 February, Super Bowl Sunday, which also happens to be Groundhog Day.

Rico says he and the ladyfriend are fleeing to warmer climes soon, fortunately...