Today, we return to a distant age (that ended about 27 months ago) when the news topic that most obsessed human beings was weather. In short, it’s cold. Temperatures are already so low that boiling water is freezing instantly, and weatherworn, childish, global warming hot takes have been frozen in time. Those hoping to melt their misery in the warm embrace of sympathetic friends and family in warmer climes are instead getting the cold shoulder because nearly everyone else is cold too. “By the end of Wednesday, 85 percent of U.S. land area and 230 million Americans will experience temperatures of 32 degrees or colder.” Around eighty million Americans are expected to feel below zero temperatures. (I live in the Bay Area. If it drops below 58, I let my dogs pee in the house.) Here’s the latest on the polar vortex.

+ “Fargo, North Dakota, for example, is expected to hit an overnight low of minus 33 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday. At that temperature, vodka freezes solid” (and Frozen’s Elsa and Anna admit that sometimes the cold does bother them…) Vox: The Midwest is facing record-breaking cold. Blame the polar vortex.

+ How cold? Colder than Mars.

+ How frigid polar vortex blasts are connected to global warming.

+ “The continental United States is 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was a century ago. Seas at the coasts are nine inches higher. The damage is mounting from these fundamental changes, and Americans are living it.” That isn’t the opening from a sci-fi version of some dystopian future. That’s what’s already happening. From WaPo: Gone In A Generation.