US weather to go nuts with blizzard, polar vortex, heat dome,
atmospheric river all at once
[March 13, 2026]
By SETH BORENSTEIN
Nearly every part of the United States is getting walloped by wild
weather or just about to be.
Days of downpours have begun in Hawaii. The Southwest will soon bake
with day after day of record 100-degree-plus (38 Celsius-plus) heat. Two
storms will dump snow by the foot over northern Great Lakes states. And
the dreaded polar vortex will again invade the Midwest and East with
soul-crushing Arctic chill.
This forecast of extremes comes as weather whiplash already hit much of
the East. On Wednesday, Washington, D.C. residents walked around in
shorts in record-breaking 86 degrees Fahrenheit (about 30 Celsius). On
Thursday, it snowed.
“All of the country, even if you’re not necessarily seeing extremes, are
going to see generally changing from cold to warm, or warm to cold to
warm,” said meteorologist Marc Chenard of the weather service’s Weather
Prediction Center in Maryland.
Former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist
Ryan Maue said he expects extreme weather in all 50 states.
Triple-digit heat persists in Southwest
A heat dome will form early next week and park over the Southwest,
baking temperatures to triple digits that haven't been seen this early
in the year, Maue and Chenard said.
Some forecasts see 98 (almost 37 Celsius) in Phoenix on Tuesday,
followed by 103, 105 and two days of 107 (almost 42 C). In 137 years of
record-keeping, Phoenix never hit 100 before March 26 and usually hit
its first 100-degree day in early May, according to the weather service,
which warned people: “Since we are not acclimated to this level of heat
this early in the year, it will be more impactful than usual.”
It has already started in Los Angeles with unusual 90-degree March
weather that had people in shorts and tank tops seeking shade anywhere
they could get it, even if it was as slender as a light post.
Shane Dixon, 40, usually runs about 5 miles near his home in Culver City
without much effort, he said, his face glistening with sweat and his
T-shirt tucked into his shorts. But Thursday was hard because of the
heat, and he had to cut it short.
“The back of my neck was melting,” he said. But he preferred it to the
cold and snow that will hit elsewhere.
“I could go literally soak myself and walk out in the sun and I’ll make
it home fine. If it was freezing cold I could not do this,” he said.
Single-digit cold invades North
Around the same time as the heat starts blasting Phoenix, the polar
vortex — a system that usually keeps frigid air penned up near the North
Pole — is forecast to send its chill deep into the Midwest and East,
even bordering some of the Southeast, Maue said
Minneapolis will hover around zero for a low, and Chicago will be in the
single digits Tuesday. The next day “temperatures in the teens and 20s
in the northeast and 20s in the Mid-Atlantic,” Maue said. Even Atlanta
could drop to the 20s.
One-two snowstorm punch
Two storm systems in a row — one Friday, then another Sunday into Monday
— will chug along the country's northern tier and Great Lakes and
between them could dump 3 to 4 feet of snow in places, Maue said.
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A person walks through falling snow at the White House on Thursday,
March 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
That bigger second storm system will see its barometric pressure drop so
quickly and sharply — meaning it is intensifying and winds are
strengthening — that it will qualify as a bomb cyclone, which is quite
unusual to develop over land. Normally bomb cyclones get their energy
from warm ocean waters, but this one will draw power from the polar
vortex.
Even Alaska and Hawaii aren't quite right
Maue said Hawaii is getting an atmospheric river that will have such
persistent heavy rain that flooding will be a major issue. Oahu is under
a flash flood warning.
And Alaska is normally frigid now, but it will be about 30 degrees
colder than usual, he said.
It is “the time of year where we can see stuff like this,” Chenard said.
“But this does seem even anomalous from what you would typically see. I
mean, some of these areas will be setting records. Record-high
temperatures for March and maybe multiple times.”
In the past week or so, tornadoes have killed at least eight people in
Oklahoma, Michiganand Indiana. The forecast for severe storms doesn't
look as big or widespread for the next week, but dangerous thunderstorms
could pop up “anywhere from the Mississippi Valley toward the East
Coast” on Sunday or Monday, Chenard said.
The jet stream goes nuts
Underlying this is a jet stream gone wild, Maue and Chenard said.
The jet stream is the river of air that moves weather from west to east
on a roller-coaster-like path. Usually the plunges are as mild as a
kiddie roller coaster. But now that jet stream is going on
near-vertical, scream-inducing drops following by straight-up ascents.
“Which means you get a lot of extremes next to each other,” Maue said.
Storm fronts coming from the Pacific hit that high pressure heat dome in
the Southwest and are pushed north to climb that mountainous jet stream
peak, “grab access to that cold air reservoir up there" and bring it
back down south down the other side of the hill, he said.
Numerous studies have connected unusual jet stream and polar vortex
activity to shrinking Arctic sea ice and human-caused climate change.
But there is hope.
“The first day of spring is 20th (of March), and then after that we get
recovery,” Maue said.
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Associated Press writer Dorany Pineda contributed from Los Angeles.
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