The stratosphere is a powerful place. Perhaps the most influential guitar ever devised is even named after this lofty layer in the atmosphere, which exists between some 10 to 30 miles up in the sky.
And during each dark winter, the Arctic’s polar vortex — strong winds that circle westward around the pole — comes to life in the stratosphere. It’s a normal, reoccurring winter phenomenon. “Every year we get this big spin up and then it disappears,” marveled Andrea Lang, an…