Cold Winter or Warm Winter: The Polar Vortex Meets “Each Night Colder Than the Last”

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In mid-September 2026 a handful of weather reports put the phrase “polar vortex” back on the table: a new season’s polar vortex is forming above the Arctic, the stratosphere is cooling faster than it did last year, and the risk of a disturbance this winter was singled out for discussion; the same reports also listed large-scale factors such as a strong El Niño signal (per Severe Weather Europe and IBTimes UK reports of 16 September 2026).

Should that be treated as a reliable forecast for the winter? Long-range outlooks of this kind deal in probabilities and signals rather than conclusions, and meteorological agencies are consistently careful with their wording — “rising risk” is not the same as “it will certainly be cold”, and that is worth stating at the outset.

In China, the old sayings around the autumn equinox are a different set of evidence. “From White Dew to the night of the autumn equinox, each night colder than the last” — after White Dew the nights turn cooler day by day, an experience people along the Yellow River basin summed up over many years (the proverb is quoted in Zhejiang Radio and Television’s “Cultural China Tour” solar-term feature). The ancients also divided the autumn equinox into three phenological periods, recorded in the Monthly Ordinances and Seventy-two Phenological Periods (Yue Ling Qi Shi Er Hou Ji Jie): the first, “thunder begins to gather in its sound”; the second, “the hibernating insects seal up their burrows”; the third, “water begins to dry up”. The book explains the first like this: thunder sounds in the yang qi of the second month; by the eighth month, amid the yin qi, it “gathers its sound and sinks into the earth”, “and all things follow it down”.

What is interesting is that the two sets of claims describe the same thing — autumn moving deeper. The difference lies only here: one works out probabilities from pressure fields and temperature anomalies, the other records a sequence from the movements of insects and water levels. So the old saying is useful, provided you see its boundary: it mostly says “once a solar term arrives, which way things will drift”, not “will it snow on 16 November”. Whether this winter will be cold is still a question for the forecast; if what you want to know is “how far autumn has gone”, the three phenological periods are a better guide than a weather app.

On 占卜迷指, many questions are exactly this mixture of “direction versus a specific date”. Describe the trouble clearly and it will recommend a suitable method, cast the chart, interpret it and export it, so that you can first tell apart what can be calculated and what can only be waited for.

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