A subscriber asked me this week about just when the coldest day in North America occurred in modern times. Here’s the answer, Ted.
On February 3, 1947, at 7:20 a.m. local time, weather observer Gordon Toole at the tiny Snag Airport in Canada’s Yukon Territory reported the all-time record North American low temperature of -81.4 degrees Fahrenheit. More than 56 years later, this record for extreme cold still stands.
Other record low North American readings include -79.8 degrees Fahrenheit observed at Prospect Creek in Alaska on January 23, 1971 and the all-time record low temperature for the ‘Lower 48' states of -69.7 degrees Fahrenheit set at Rogers Pass, Montana, on January 20, 1954.
The coldest temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere where people reside, was the -90.4 degrees Fahrenheit observed on February 6, 1892 at Verkhoyansk, north of the Arctic Circle in Siberia.
The only other place in the Northern Hemisphere where temperatures have been colder than -81 degrees Fahrenheit occurred in central Greenland on January 9, 1954 at Northice, when a British team recorded -86.8 degrees Fahrenheit at 6:32 a.m. local time.
I should mention that there was an ‘unofficial’ record low temperature of -94 degrees Fahrenheit observed at Oymakon in northeastern Siberia on January 6, 1959. Oymakon has been consistently colder than Verkhoyansk, so this record may be someday accepted as the coldest temperature in modern times in the Northern Hemisphere.
The coldest temperature ever recorded on earth was the -128.6 degrees Fahrenheit reading at the Russian scientific station of Vostok in Antarctica on July 21, 1983. This station, which is staffed year-round, owes its horrifically cold weather to a lofty altitude of 11,200 feet above sea level. Vostok also holds the second coldest reading ever observed of -126.4 degrees Fahrenheit on August 24,1960.
Locally in Idaho, our coldest temperature ever observed in the state was the bone-chilling -60 degrees Fahrenheit reading at Island Park Dam on January 18, 1943. The elevation of this weather station is 6,285 feet.
The coldest Inauguration Day in the U.S. marked the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s second term on January 21, 1985. The wind chill factor at the time that President Reagan took the oath was -30 degrees Fahrenheit in Washington, D.C.
