Coldest wind chill by state

[tamarack]

20 hours ago, beavis1729 said:

I poked around and looked for hourly temp/wind obs in Maine during late Feb 1943, but no luck so far.

The -39 in Portland is even more shocking because, not only does it blow all other low temp readings out of the water in Portland...but it occurred relatively late in the season...on 2/26/1943.  A cool 58 degrees below the 1981-2010 normal low of 19.  Yikes.   

PWM's coldest (midnight obs, so those 1/17 and 1/18 lows are 2 different mornings.):
-39   2/16/1943
-31   2/15/1943   (My earlier -32 was an error.)
-26   1/19/1971
-25   2/3/1971
-22   2/2/1961
-22   2/13/1967
-22   1/17/1971
-22   1/18/1971
4 @ -21:  1/24/48 to 1/20/1971.  (No surprise that Jan 1971 is their coldest month on record.)

I'm 99.9% sure that no other coastal site in the lower 48 has gotten colder than that -39.  Even in AK, I think one would need to go north of the Aleutian Peninsula to find a colder morning.

[Knightking2018]

20 hours ago, dendrite said:

Have you tried here for hourlies?

https://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/CDO/cdoselect.cmd

  How does it work? I don't know how it works.

[Knightking2018]

On 6/14/2018 at 12:22 PM, dendrite said:

I put in a request for data from Limestone (and some other sites) and had no luck with beating the -52F or -54F. If you want to look at the data for the fun of it (while it's temporarily still available) here are the links.

HUL
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/72703399999-1943-02_4293847657710dat.html
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/72703399999-1943-02_3085127657709dat.html
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/72703399999-1943-02_5776307657714dat.html

PQI
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/72713014604-1943-02_1867547657715dat.html

BGR
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/72607099999-1943-02_7875057657716dat.html

LIZ
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/72712514623-1957-01_3553737658774dat.html
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/72712514623-1982-01_9431147658772dat.html
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/72712514623-1984-01_757727658775dat.html
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/99999994645-2009-01_7434377658776dat.html
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/99999994645-2009-01_6307047658777dat.html
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/72712514623-1980-12_791517658784dat.html
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/72712514623-1981-01_8358887658786dat.html
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/72712514623-1988-01_839277658787dat.html
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/99999994645-2004-01_8407227658804dat.html

   How do you get that specific data? I cannot find any pages that look like that.

[dendrite]

9 minutes ago, Knightking2018 said:

   How do you get that specific data? I cannot find any pages that look like that.

I hit a roadblock at state selection just now. Maybe they’re having temporary issues. 

[Knightking2018]

On 6/14/2018 at 12:23 PM, rimetree said:

I have a distinct memory of a report on NBC nightly news from some time in the 80s where they said Mount Washington recorded a wind chill of -200. I'd have to think the -107 is more likely but maybe I'll try to find it in the archives somewhere.

  Are you sure of -200F? On the old wind chill scale as the winds got stronger the wind chills would actually start warming up once you got past like 50 or 60 mph. Vostok Station, Antarctica in August of 2005 recorded a temp of -99F with winds of 100 mph creating a wind chill of -191F. On the old wind chill scale it would be -176. 

[Knightking2018]

On 6/16/2018 at 4:28 PM, dendrite said:

I hit a roadblock at state selection just now. Maybe they’re having temporary issues. 

  I think it is working again. How do you get the pages to look like you have them in Limestone and other stations? What do you go under?

[Knightking2018]

On 6/18/2018 at 7:09 PM, (((Will))) said:

I was in northern Maine, around Fort Kent, though Stacey and I drove to the Allagash with a sensor hanging out the window and stopping over and over around 1am. It hit -46 the coldest we found.

I've seen it -2x with strong blowing winds all over Fort Kent/Frenchville/Madawaska - but who counts that?

Windchill is fake.

 

Windchill records are a mind game.

 

PS - I was living in Frenchville when that -54 windchill. That was real cold, -25 or colder temp with wind so strong it drifted snow across the road.

 

But still - windchill is fake.

   I for some reason been wanting to experience some wind chills around 50 to 65 below zero on the new scale. I just wonder how a wind chill of -45F compares to a wind chill of -65F. The air looks like an ice crystal when the wind chill is -45F. That is probably my coldest I experienced back in 1989.

[tamarack]

51 minutes ago, (((Will))) said:

It's not what you expect. Beyond a point, probably around -25 or so, the cold just feels like a searing kind of dry burn on your skin. It's cold but painful, kind of in the same way chapped lips burn. The immediate sensation is not a recognition of coldness or something like that, the immediate recognition is one of some sort of pain - because it really is harming the epithelial cells that make up your skin. Keratinization provides some protection - but only till a point.

It's a weird feeling.

Those coldest days my recollection is not one of coldcold, my recollection is of searing, painful cold.

Same for me.  Not a wind chill situation, but when I handle firewood (outdoors) barehanded at +20, it feels cold.  At -20 it feels painful.

[beavis1729]

On 6/18/2018 at 4:51 PM, Knightking2018 said:

  I found a -22F  temp, 16 mph wind, and wind chill of -48F in Goodland on February 5, 1982 .

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/orders/isd/72465023065-1982-02_2453397661655dat.html

Good find.  In those hourlies, I see -21 with 16 mph wind, and -22 with 14 mph wind.  Both result in a WC of -47. The intra-hour reading showed a 16 mph wind, but no temp to go along with it. Again, can't take it too seriously; part of the challenge and fun of science is putting the pieces together and finding/analyzing data. The planet has been around for a long time...I'm sure some of records will be broken in the next 50-100 years.  Some of it depends on timing and having a better observation network now; we don't need to hope that the extreme events occur only at the major reporting stations.  For example - if the record cold in Bartlesville, OK in Feb 2011 occurred a generation ago, we would have probably never known about it. Same with tropical storms in the middle of the Atlantic. Just part of the journey.

I've updated the list in the first post of the thread; it's easier to keep track there.

[Knightking2018]

18 hours ago, (((Will))) said:

It's not what you expect. Beyond a point, probably around -25 or so, the cold just feels like a searing kind of dry burn on your skin. It's cold but painful, kind of in the same way chapped lips burn. The immediate sensation is not a recognition of coldness or something like that, the immediate recognition is one of some sort of pain - because it really is harming the epithelial cells that make up your skin. Keratinization provides some protection - but only till a point.

It's a weird feeling.

Those coldest days my recollection is not one of coldcold, my recollection is of searing, painful cold.

   I felt around maybe -45F wind chill(new scale)back in 1989 and it feels like wasps stinging you on your exposed skin. I put my leg out the door of my trailor for like 15 seconds and it just felt beyond words. At -25F I don't notice the sting as much but it definitely hurts your joints if you have no long underwear or nothing underneath your pants or jeans when you go outside for a few minutes. 

[Knightking2018]

   Here are some people who lived in Kansas or visited there in December of 1989 and said it was cold to the core. http://m.ljworld.com/weblogs/lawrence_weather_watch/2010/jan/9/what-was-your-coldest-day/

 

[buckeye]

top thread

6 pages on windchill...

....in the summer.

 

[beavis1729]

9 hours ago, Knightking2018 said:

  I hope for some reason it happens again in my lifetime. Do you believe even though it is not on paper that wind chills of -50F or colder do occur in Kansas? Hopefully today there is mesonets out in Northern Kansas. Sorry about the typo I thought it was -22F and 16 mph. 

Very rarely in that part of the world. 

In fact, they hardly ever occur even in the Chicago area...where winter temps average about 6-8 degrees colder than northern KS.  As an example...despite the fact that 1/6/2014 was a brutally cold and windy day in northern IL, wind chills "only" dropped to around -45.

[Knightking2018]

23 hours ago, Knightking2018 said:

   Here are some people who lived in Kansas or visited there in December of 1989 and said it was cold to the core. http://m.ljworld.com/weblogs/lawrence_weather_watch/2010/jan/9/what-was-your-coldest-day/

 

  I wonder reliable that one guy in the article who said he had a temperature of -22F and a wind chill of -70F on the old scale. It would be -51F on the new scale. He said he worked at UPS and said it was the most painful nights of his life. However he doesn't indicate where he was living at in Kansas. As cold as December of 1989 was I see no reason to not believe him either.

[tamarack]

On ‎6‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 12:50 AM, Knightking2018 said:

 

  So I am going to go with a more fairer estimate. Caribou, Maine January 18, 1982 temp -28F winds 20 mph wind chill -59F. Not to mention the gusts were up to 43 mph.

https://www.almanac.com/weather/history/ME/Caribou/1982-01-18

 

Revisiting this - Clayton Lake lies in a broad valley at 1000' elev, about 400' higher than CAR.  Clayton was -31 that morning, and given the full mixing, was probably at least as windy.  I doubt they recorded wind speeds, but -31 at 20 mph converts to WCI of -62.

Another revisit, that -85 (old scale) I mentioned in an earlier post.  CAR temp was -20 at the time I heard that WCI from the radio, and that would require wind speeds in the low 40s.  It was indeed very windy - the gauge on the lee shore of Portage Lake, about 20 miles west from CAR, was wiggling above/below 30 - but the low 40s had to be a gust.  We spent that day in the woods another 10-12 miles west of Portage, and sustained 40+ would've had us dodging from crashing spruce trees the whole time.  Mid 20s is more likely, for WCI (new scale) around -50, so not a contender.

[tamarack]

1 hour ago, (((Will))) said:

Another thing about the Frenchville readings. Those are measured at the airport which is quite a bit higher than the towns in that area. Winds up there are on average much higher than the surrounding areas - although there are a couple of fields in the Fort Kent/Frenchville/St Agatha/Madawaska area that really do get good gusts. If I had to pick an area within a reasonably inhabited area of Maine (by reasonably inhabited I'm making a distinction with places at elevations 3,500'+, lol, not the Allagash/Clayton Lake which I think DO count) but limiting out those insane outliers at high elevation - I think the St John Valley corridor probably holds the record for windchill. I lived there for quite a while and things really get colder there than areas down in Caribou or Limestone or Houlton, etc.

I'm not sure there are any year-round homes above 2000' in Maine - maybe in Rangeley, and if so, only marginally higher.  Nobody's even close to 3500.  In our almost 10 winters in Ft. Kent, we lived in 3 different spots, 2 in town at about 520' and the 3rd 4 miles to the sw at about the same elev as FVE.  All 10 mornings with temps 35-47 below during those winters came at the lower spots.  Those 2 sites averaged over 5 mornings/winter at -30 or colder, while the back settlement had only 1.5.  WCI records depend, of course, on where observations are being taken.  With the exception of MWN, those places usually are not the spots where the lowest chills have occurred.  (As you infer in the above post)  The state record low temp set in 2009 was at Big Black River, near the St.-Pamphile border crossing, at about 900'.  However, I think that Estcourt Station, at 700', may actually get colder, but there's no official obs there.  (Maine's coldest WCI is certainly atop Katahdin, 1000' lower than MWN but also 115 miles closer to the North Pole.  And Governor Baxter's deeds of trust would probably be violated by having permanent wx instruments there.)  C'est la vie.

[Knightking2018]

On 6/21/2018 at 11:03 AM, beavis1729 said:

Very rarely in that part of the world. 

In fact, they hardly ever occur even in the Chicago area...where winter temps average about 6-8 degrees colder than northern KS.  As an example...despite the fact that 1/6/2014 was a brutally cold and windy day in northern IL, wind chills "only" dropped to around -45.

  The average low in Mankato, Kansas in January is 12F and in Chicago it is 18F. However the average high in January in Mankato, Kansas is 36F and the average high in Chicago is 32F. I would think at least a few degrees colder on average. Mankato is the area I suspect had a wind chill of -52F to -55F on January 10, 1982. Mankato had an all time record low of -25F on that date. Winds in that area had to have been at least 15-20 mph. It ranged from 17 mph in Manhattan to 23 mph in Concordia. 

  Here is a comparison in temperatures in Mankato, Kansas and Chicago in the month of January. 

http://www.intellicast.com/Local/History.aspx?month=1

http://www.intellicast.com/Local/History.aspx?month=1

[BuffaloWeather]

Since it's summer the real thread should be about the warmest heat index on record for the USA. Has to be death valley right? 

[Hoosier]

3 hours ago, BuffaloWeather said:

Since it's summer the real thread should be about the warmest heat index on record for the USA. Has to be death valley right? 

I doubt it.  Of course it gets crazy hot there but the dews aren't high enough. My guess for highest heat index would be somewhere in the Midwest, which has the benefit of extra evapotranspiration from the crops.

[Knightking2018]

2 hours ago, Hoosier said:

I doubt it.  Of course it gets crazy hot there but the dews aren't high enough. My guess for highest heat index would be somewhere in the Midwest, which has the benefit of extra evapotranspiration from the crops.

  According to wunderground the highest heat index recorded in the US happened at Appleton, Wisconsin on July 13, 1995. It was 149F.

[Knightking2018]

   I have done some research from old newspapers in Bonner Springs, Kansas at the library from 1982, 1983, and 1989. I live there now. On January 10, 1982 they had a temp of -16F with winds of 20-25 mph. On December 24, 1983 The temperature was -17F with winds between 25-35 mph. Also a reading from December 23, 1989. The temp was -30F with winds of 5-10 mph. I may ask around a little bit more. These were all according to the Bonner Springs newspaper. The first ones wind chills  could range from -43F to -45F for the first one, the second one could range from -47F to -51F, and the last one from -46F to -53F. There are others I am going to check throughout Kansas though and maybe ask some people around my town. 

[Knightking2018]

  There were several areas in Kansas that had wind chills in the -40s on February 1-3, 2011 and there were -40s wind chills in Kansas near the Oklahoma border on February 10, 2011. Also the 99.9% wind chill is -32F for St. Francis, Kansas which is practically the same as Chicago's 99.9% wind chill of -33F. 

[Knightking2018]

 Here is something you might like.

 

 

[Knightking2018]

https://kansashistoricalsociety.newspapers.com/image/10727241/

  This newspaper from December 28, 1989 says temperatures were -30F in Republic County, Kansas with wind chills of -60F to -70F below. To get a -30F with a -60F on the old scale you would require a wind of 10.7 mph. That would be -54F on the new scale. For -70F you would need a wind of 14.4 mph with a -30F temperature. That would be a -57F on the new scale. Even with an 8.5 mph wind and a temp of -30F that would be -52F on the old scale and -51F on the new scale. 

   Republic, Kansas and Webber, Kansas had a record low of -29F on December 22-23, 1989 according to intellicast so it did happen. Webber is 3 miles from the Nebraska border and 5-6 miles to Superior, Nebraska

  So even with a -29F and 8.5 mph wind that would be -51F on the old scale and -50F on the new scale. That is very conservative. 

[Knightking2018]

   Here is another newspaper mentioning temperatures falling to -25F to -30F with wind chills as low as -70F on the old scale. https://kansashistoricalsociety.newspapers.com/image/343888892/

So there certainly was -50F wind chills on the new scale December 22-23, 1989 in Republic County, Kansas and Jefferson County, Kansas.

[Knightking2018]

    Worcester, Massachusetts January 23, 1976. Temp -11F Winds 36 mph wind chill -43F. I am certain there are colder ones than that. 

   Mauna Kea Observatories, Hawaii had a temp of 15F on January 5, 1975.

   Seneca, Oregon had a temp of -54F on February 10, 1933.

   Mazama, Washington had a temp of -48F on December 30, 1968.

   

[tamarack]

On ‎6‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 6:08 AM, (((Will))) said:

I always wondered about that low for Portland. It's so incongruously low for other areas in southern Maine and downeast.

Certainly incongruous for PWM itself, not so much for the general area.  In addition to the -37 at CON, Bridgton - 30 miles NW of PWM - also had -39.  Gardiner, 50 miles to the NE, had -35.  However, LEW, 30 miles N from PWM, only got down to -21, and the usually colder Farmington had -28.  Their all time low is also -39, in Jan. 1994 (thanks, Pinatubo) on a morning when PWM was -10.

[Knightking2018]

   This really has nothing to do with the topic but I have a temperature of 102F and a heat index of 117F. It is baking outside. There was even 120F to 122F some areas nearby. 

[Knightking2018]

   Oketo/Marysville, Kansas December 24, 1983. Temp -19F winds 32 mph wind chill -52F(-78F old scale). 

   https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/ks/marysville/KKSMARYS3/date/1983-12-24

   I know Emporia had a temperature of -16F with a wind of 30 mph with a wind chill of -48F(-72F old scale) on December 24, 1983. I can't prove the Emporia one but I finally found a -50F or colder in Kansas. There may be possibly a couple more out there on certain dates but this is what I have been looking for. It has been six months. 

  Wunderground has finally updated there site somewhat.

I looked everywhere else and I could not find any other data. It either does not exist or does not exists on that day. 

[beavis1729]

On 6/26/2018 at 6:16 PM, Knightking2018 said:

 Here is something you might like.

 

 

Nice.  That is an insane airmass...-23 in Akron OH with a 21 mph wind out of the SW.  Wow...