50 Fascinating And Terrifying Pics Of The Power Of Winter (New Pics)

It's winter right now in the Northern Hemisphere, and just this morning, I saw a post about how the darkest 10 weeks of the year are finally over. The five weeks before the winter solstice and five weeks after it are the darkest 10, with December 21 being the darkest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

That's the day when astronomical winter begins. Meteorological winter starts on the 1st of December, and people living in the Northern Hemisphere have already seen their fair share of crazy winter weather.

Sweden reported their lowest temperature in decades, at a whopping -48F on January 5th. The U.S. reported freezing temperatures of -30F from the northern Rockies, northern Kansas, and Iowa.

So Bored Panda reached out to a professional in the field – Meteorologist Andrew Markowitz. Lately, he too has been covering the shenanigans of the Arctic Blast in the U.S. on his TikTok channel, which has over 97k followers and 1.4M views.

Much of what we see in these pictures can be the product of extreme weather. What exactly is an extreme winter? Andrew says that it all depends on the location. The best way to determine this, the meteorologist says, would be by calculating averages.

"If your temperatures are much colder than average (more than 5 degrees or so) or you get much more snowfall than normal, then that would qualify as an extreme winter. Sometimes, this can be localized or other times more widespread."

"Some regions are much more equipped to handle winter weather than others, which is what matters the most." These are places that have frequent cold winters, so they're better prepared for this kind of weather. "8 [inches] of snow or 10 degrees in Atlanta is much different than in Boston," the meteorologist explains.