The Day After Tomorrow is a big Hollywood movie portraying devastating weather phenomena as the world's climate is suddenly flipped over to a new ice age by global warming. Tornadoes in Los Angeles, huge hailstones in Tokyo and a giant storm surge flooding Manhattan. Like most big-budget movies, it's better to leave your brains at the door and just enjoy the ride (and a pretty good ride it is too for The Day After Tomorrow). However, there was one effect in particular that is just begging for some critical analysis.

In the movie huge cyclonic systems form in the polar regions, wreaking frozen devastation across Europe and North America. The eyes of the cyclones funnel very cold (approximately -100 degrees Celcius) upper stratospheric down to the surface, freezing everything within seconds. There has to be something wrong with this!