I haven't got a Met. degree either, but here goes:
Normally you should see a wavy pinkish closed loop - the polar vortex, encircled by the jetstream - all the way round the pole. This keeps polar air over the pole, giving low temperatures, lots of sea ice, happy polar bears and oil tankers staying out. At the same time it keeps warmer southern air down here where it belongs.
Instead, climate change has meant that air over the poles is warmer and the jetstream is weaker, with the result that the polar vortex has broken up. You can see a large incursion of Atlantic air, bringing warmth from the Gulf Stream up over Iceland and the eastern coast of Greenland, while a parallel air stream is bringing easterly polar air down from Novaya Zemlya & C° along the west coast of Norway, over the North Sea and over Europe and the UK - what the tabloids are calling "the beast from the east".
The web site is fun: if you click on "earth" in the bottom left you get a menu where you can change altitude & time and select various overlays for wind speed, temperature, humidity, "misery index", etc. Altitude's a bit funny: it's given in hectopascals where 1000 hPa = 1 atmosphere = approx. pressure at sea level. It decreases with height. I chose 500 hPa because it best matches what the various science comix are saying about the cold spell.
You can zoom in on your own area and see what's going to happen in the next few days. Gives a bit of depth to the weather map.
