Meteorologists warn that the coldest burst of Arctic air this season is coming to put an icy and prolonged exclamation point on America’s winter of repeated polar vortex invasions starting this weekend.

The polar vortex has split and will drift into the Hudson Bay through next week with sustainable cold weather returning to southern West Virginia. Besides the Greenland block pattern developing and holding strong through the next 10 days before breaking down,

The vortex is essentially an area of low pressure in the upper layers of the atmosphere over the polar region up north. This vortex consists of powerful westerly winds in the stratosphere, about 10 to 30 miles above the North Pole, according to Climate.gov.

On the heels of successive winter storms that brought heavy snow and ice to a wide swath of the United States, another arctic blast tied to the polar vortex will send temperatures plummeting across the country early next week,

A weeklong, polar vortex-related Arctic outbreak rivaling any seen so far this winter is slated to bring frigid conditions to much of the U.S. east of the Rockies next week. Threat level: The Arctic air is likely to send temperatures plunging to at least 30 degrees below average for mid-February across the Midwest and Plains states,