MONROE — Just three weeks ago, residents across Wisconsin capped their Christmas holiday season with above-average seasonal temperatures and little or no snow on the ground. 

It appeared as though the delivery of winter was delayed thanks to a clerical error in the shipping yard. Once Mother Nature spotted the discrepancy, she sent out all of Old Man Winter’s care packages at once.

“After a mild and dry start to the winter season, there were two strong low pressure systems that impacted Wisconsin and dumped over a foot of snow in a span of 5 days, with pockets seeing over 2 feet in some spots,” the National Weather Service said in a press release recapping a week of winter storms that took place between Tuesday, Jan. 9 and Sunday, Jan. 14. “Not only did these systems produced heavy snow, blizzards across the U.S. it also brought flooding, severe thunderstorms, and tornadoes to other parts of the country.”

Between 12 and 24 inches of snow fell across the region during that span. 

First on Jan. 9, a snowstorm hit the area, bringing about 5.5 inches  of wet snow to Monroe, Juda and Brodhead areas, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Accumulation was higher to the north and west, with New Glarus getting hit with about 7.9 inches and Darlington 6.5 inches. Dodgeville saw more than 10 inches of snow.

The storm canceled schools across the region that day, along with after school activities, like high school and youth sports.

Green County saw four accidents that day — not including slide offs into the ditch, or vehicles getting stranded in snow drifts. In Lafayette County, nine cars went into the ditch, with emergency crews responding to another four accidents. 

“The first strong low pressure system tracked across southern Illinois and brought heavy snow to inland portions of the area,” NWS noted. “Then a smaller, clipper system track across the area dropping another a few inches of fluffy snow early Thursday morning.”

The next storm hit in two waves from Thursday through Saturday. Monroe saw more than a foot of snow fall, while Darlington had 10 inches and Brodhead eight. This storm was met with heavy winds, steady in the 20 mile per hour range or higher, with gusts of 35-40 mph. It also closed schools and businesses in the region, as well as canceled several community events.

“The late week dumped over a foot of snow across most of southern Wisconsin. ... Snow eventually wrapped up later Saturday just before the bitter cold, Arctic airmass settled into the region,” the NWS said in its recap.

The mix of the precipitation and winds caused blizzard and near-white out conditions. Municipal and county highway department plows struggled to keep up. Lafayette, Stephenson and Grant Counties all pulled their vehicles off the road by 7 p.m. on Friday night and didn’t get back out for nearly 12 hours.

Lafayette County again saw dozens of slide offs and accidents. Both Green and Lafayette County had jack knifed semi-trucks, which caused further road closures. Near Cobb and Monfort, a fire at Insight FS closed a stretch of highway early in the morning, around 8 a.m. By 3 p.m., the fire had been contained and the risk of an explosion had subsided, according to Iowa County Sheriff Michael Peterson.

NWS answered a question posed via social media of “why did this winter storm produce more snow than the early week storm?”

“The main reason is slightly colder temperatures, better forcing, better snowfall rates. Snow pack aided in snowfall accumulations as well. Although there were similarities between the two systems, they performed differently and it is important to remember no two storms are the same,” the NWS responded.

Arctic Blast descends upon U.S.

The subzero temperatures that followed the second storm only added to the chaos. When snow subsided Saturday morning, temperatures were still in the mid-20 degrees Fahrenheit in Monroe, but the temps steadily dropped throughout the day, with high winds knocking the wind chill below zero. By 7 a.m. Sunday, the wind chill in Monroe was -39 degrees. 

Temperatures are expected to stay in the single or sub-zero range throughout the week, especially when adding in effects of the wind chill. Seasonal temps are forecasted to return around Monday, Jan. 22, when a new weather pattern emerges, bringing in a stretch of 30-plus degrees for both the high and lows.

The cold blast isn’t isolated to Wisconsin or even the upper Midwest. An “Arctic Blast” descended upon the entire nation, bringing mercury in thermometers down to levels normally seen in northern Alaska and Canada thanks to a dipping polar jet stream.

Sub-zero temps reached down to New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee and northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia.

A similar event in 2021 struck Texas, shutting down the power grid for a short time. 

“Typically, very cold air in the Arctic is trapped inside a high-altitude swirl of winds called the polar vortex, which is surrounded by a lower-altitude band called the polar jet stream,” said Meghan Bartels at Scientific American. “If the polar vortex gets disrupted, however, the jet stream can become wavy and carry frigid air much farther south than usual in an Arctic blast. Sometimes this frigid air brings snow and ice; other times the weather is dry but bitterly cold.”

Bartels said that many experts believe climate change likely plays a role. Judah Cohen, a climate scientist with Verisk Atmospheric and Environmental Research, contends that climate change is directly disrupting the polar vortex. 

The planet saw its warmest year on record in 2023, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), at a mark of 0.27 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the previous record holder in 2016. 

According to NOAA’s data, the planet’s surface temperature in 2023 was 2.12 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average — and 2.43 degrees Fahrenheit above the preindustrial levels, Scientific American reported on Jan. 12, 2024.

A 2023 El Niño event in the Pacific Ocean got things started, then a mix of melting sea ice near Scandinavia and high snowfalls in Siberia set up a thermal contrast, which sent the polar jet stream into two waves. 

“It seems very counterintuitive and surprising that a warmer planet can actually increase your odds of experiencing severe winter weather events — but that’s what our research has shown,” Cohen told Bartels.

Cohen also expects a similar event later this month and likely again in February, though likely less severe.

“To me, this is indicative of a climate changed world with greater extremes,” Kristina Dahl, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said to Bartels. “I like to think of these polar jet stream outbreaks as ‘global weirding. Climate change is causing all sorts of different impacts, and some of them are counterintuitive.”