Feb 11, 2021

Extension Agent Chuck Otte researches cold weather records

Posted Feb 11, 2021 4:45 PM
Geary County Extension Agent Chuck Otte
Geary County Extension Agent Chuck Otte

Previously I had talked about how long this cold snap may last and how far back do we have to go to find a week or longer of sub freezing weather which was late December 2017 into January 2018 for 12 consecutive below freezing days. I started digging deeper into the records to find the longest period of subfreezing as well as consecutive days below 20 below 10 or even below zero. Daytime highs that don’t get above zero are not very common. Overnight lows we see a lot of below zero records. In fact the earliest in the winter season that we’ve ever seen a low below zero is November 28 (-4 in 1952) and the latest in the season that we’ve seen below zero is March 15 (-2 in 1975).

As we go through the data set of daily high and low temperatures we can find numerous occurrences of 10 to 12 consecutive days where the daily high did not get above freezing and occasionally even two full weeks below freezing. But two extended cold periods stand out. During the late 1970s and into the 1980s much of the country went through an abnormally cool period that some climatologists referred to as a mini ice age. Since then we’ve seen an ongoing warm up across the country and the globe.

On December 28, 1978 the high for the day was an unusually warm 54 degrees. (Cold spells are often preluded with above average temperatures. Remember we hit 62 just a week ago on February 3.) The region wouldn’t see an above freezing temperature again until January 18, 1979 when we reached 37 degrees. A lot of those daytime highs were in the teens and twenties but the temperature didn’t reach 32 and above until the 18th. That was 20 consecutive days below freezing. That period also has the longest run of below 20 degree temperatures, specifically December 29, 1978 (high of 19) through January 7, 1979 (high of 18). That 10 day run is the longest period the Junction City region has been below 20.

We also had a 17 day run of below freezing temperatures from December 14, 1983 through December 30 1983. Within that span we also had a 9 day stretch below 20 from December 17 though December 25. This noteworthy cold spell contains within it a couple of other records. From December 18 through the 24, 1983 the temperature never got warmer than 5 degrees. That is the longest period of time of staying below 10 degrees.

When we start looking at continuous periods when the temperature stayed below zero we fin it is a very short list. There have only been three periods, since January 1948 that we have had daytime highs that stayed below zero. While January is our coldest month of the year, none of these three events occurred during the month of January. December 21 - 23, 1983 we had daytime highs of -2, -1, -2. Finally on the 24th it warmed up to 1 for an afternoon high. We don’t have the hourly records for those days but it is safe to say that we were below zero for over 72 hours! Interestingly December 21 and 22, 1989 was also brutally cold. The highs on those two days were -7 and -3. Obviously -7 on the 21st is the coldest daytime high on record. Lastly, February 4, 1989 saw an afternoon high of only -2. Those six days are the only days on record with high temperatures that failed to get above zero.

Both of these lengthy runs of cold weather not surprisingly line up with our coldest months on record. Our all time coldest month on record was January 1979 with a monthly average temperature of 12.1 degrees. The second coldest month on record was December 1983 with an average temperature of 13.6. Average monthly temperature is calculated as the average of the daily high and low temperatures across the entire month.

How our current cold snap will match up to some of these historic events is yet to be seen. Current long range forecasts indicate that it could be the end of next week before we move back above zero with some chilly, subzero nights forecast for the weekend. All we can do is bundle up and watch the weather.

Chuck Otte