Winter 2017-2018 smaller Arctic Polar Vortex Vortices make it warmer for most places except one colder area at once

~The smaller and colder the CTNP vortices the more unstable they become.
~Moving Southwards cold vortices are not a sign of cooling, quite the opposite,  they are
symptoms of a warmer world.
~We now have a climate system which makes modest cyclones very important  in rearranging
   Global Circulations within a few days.

World News flash! it is only colder in about 2/3 of North America at present:

NOAA temperature anomalies are not exactly announcing the beginning of a new ice age,  but if you live in North America you might think otherwise.  Note East of the Rockies coldest surface temps,  not exactly unexpected as written in previous article,  the lack of snow on the ground at midwinter is very conducive for a deeper cooling.  The good news is ,  a significant area of colder atmosphere is not necessarily stable,  and can move away or fade rapidly in especially a warming world:

 Note the Polar Vortex is the entire counterclockwise circulation starting in orange Northwards,  which has cold air vortices within:

NOAA daily composites at 600 mb,  this is where the temperature represents the entire Troposphere.  We see in deeper purple the coldest atmospheres which morph quite a lot,  it gets disrupted by mainly wrm air advection fom moving Northwards Cyclones.  It is not quite exactly a world wide cold winter.



Slowing down the previous animation you can read why a warmer planet has unstable less pervasive colder air ,  but can have serious events of deep freezing even though the rest of the world does not: 

Currently only North America has a deep surface freeze,  this can change quickly,
the smaller the coldest atmosphere (with respect to the size of the rest of the world) the faster its change in spacial distribution and the greater the temperature extreme variances. But this year has 2 main coldest vortices which tend to reform.  Reminds me of hurricane eye wall replacemens.
They are  Canadian Arctic Archipelago and NE Siberia,  both are vulnerable to small weather events, morph rather quickly,  distort along the warm air zones given by the Atlantic and Pacific.  Central Russia and Alaska have had most fascinating warming because there is not enough winter to spread around.  WD January 3,2018