When a January morning stings exposed skin, it usually raises a simple question about whether the weather has ever been worse. Late in January 2019, as severe cold settled over much of the United States, that question carried real weight. During that week, Good Morning America broadcast that certain regions would near their absolute lowest ever recorded.
Every state keeps its own all-time benchmark, and those figures share little beyond a label. ABC7 Los Angeles published its 50-state list on Jan. 29, 2019, under the byline LA Blake, pairing each state’s coldest reading with the date and place where it occurred. The station credited all of its data to the State Climate Extremes Committee. The full roster spans 118 years, stretching from an 1893 reading in Delaware to a 2011 reading in Oklahoma, and falling in months as far apart as December and May.
The Deepest Frosts Recorded Across America
Hawaii’s 12 degrees at Mauna Kea Observatory in 1979 stands as the lone entry above zero. Every other state has dropped below zero at least once, though the sites vary wildly from Tallahassee to a biological station in Virginia and a fire camp in Georgia. A forecast predicting a town will approach its historic floor says little until a reader knows which number sits on the books and how long it has stood.
Alaska holds the deepest cold any state has logged, recording a reading of -80 degrees at Prospect Creek on Jan. 23, 1971. No other state comes within 10 degrees of it. Montana stands as the nearest challenger, having fallen to -70 degrees at Rogers Pass on Jan. 20, 1954. Wyoming closes out this group of 10 at -66 degrees, recorded on Feb. 9, 1933, at the Riverside Ranger station in Yellowstone.
The spacing leaves Montana closer to Wyoming than to Alaska, even though only Alaska outdoes it. Rogers Pass supplies the only 1950s benchmark among these 10 states. Four of the group trace back to the 1930s, while the remaining five arrived in 1943, 1971, 1985, and 1996, with Minnesota and Wisconsin sharing that final year.
How Extreme Cold Clustered Across Eras
Positioned just a short distance north of the Arctic Circle where Prospect Creek and the Jim River converge, a camp at Prospect Creek once provided housing for laborers constructing the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Today, a forest clearing covers the site, meaning the coldest mark on the 50-state list now belongs to a place with no camp left standing. Prospect Creek sits 20 degrees below the -60 mark that North Dakota, Idaho, and Minnesota share.
North Dakota’s coldest reading on file came at Parshall on Feb. 15, 1936, when the thermometer fell to -60 degrees. Idaho equaled the Parshall mark in 1943 at Island Park, and Minnesota hit it in 1996, showing the same extreme recurring across distant eras. South Dakota set its own all-time benchmark two days after Parshall’s, with McIntosh sinking to -58 degrees on Feb. 17, 1936.
Wyoming and Oregon both recorded historic lows during a severe February 1933 cold snap. Wyoming fell to -66 degrees on Feb. 9, while Oregon dropped to -54 degrees in Seneca on Feb. 10. Texas had already fallen to -23 degrees at Seminole on Feb. 8, anchoring a three-day run of state lows spanning 43 degrees. Vermont supplied a fourth 1933 entry with -50 degrees at Bloomfield on Dec. 30, making 1933 the only year on the list with state lows in both February and December.
The Clustered Records of 1985
Colorado logged -61 degrees at Maybell on Feb. 1, 1985, leaving the state one degree colder than the three-way tie at -60. That reading arrived during 1985, the most crowded year for new state lows on the list. Five states set their all-time floors that year, and no other year claims more than four.
Three of those floors fell on a single date, Jan. 21, 1985. At Caesars Head, South Carolina dropped to -19, Pembroke’s Mountain Lake Biological Station saw Virginia fall to -30, and Mt. Mitchell brought North Carolina down to -34. New Hampshire followed the next day with -50 at Mount Washington. Appearing 10 days after New Hampshire’s entry, Colorado’s date concludes that sequence and represents the sole February appearance among the five.
Knowing these old extremes turns a vague winter weather alert into a concrete number people can measure the morning against.
