Chill out, everyone, the polar vortex is not coming back to Chicago.
Despite a tweet today from the National Weather Service, which said a "July version" of the polar vortex will hit Chicago next week, the area won't see a single flake or anything close to a chill.
"I've been in the business 47 years and I've always learned a polar vortex forms in the winter," Skilling told RedEye Thursday. "There's such a sensitivity to that term, it's not what I would have used."
Skilling said Chicago will see lower than normal temperatures for most of next week, 70s during the day and temps as low as the low-50s at night. He chooses instead to call it a "highly amplified jet stream" that will bring "a pool of unseasonably cool air." Not as flashy, sure, but more accurate, he says.
Also, those freaked out by the term should keep in mind that, in recent weeks, temperatures in northern Canada and even Alaska have actually been higher than they have here. Hard to believe, he says, but it should comfort those worried frigid arctic air is going to be sucked into Chicago.
Skilling said it would be a "near physical impossibility" for actual polar vortex conditions to form. How impossible? Skilling says a volcano would have to erupt, or a nuclear winter would have to blot out the sun.
"We're not going to see snow flying, or ice pellets," he said. "We might see some hail from thunderstorms."
Skilling even said there's an upside to the lower temperatures. So far this year, Chicago has used about 28-percent less air conditioning than it normally does, said Skilling as he made calculations during an interview.
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