It was a frigid weekend, but perfectly normal

Image 1 of 4

This weekend was the coldest in a couple of years with temperatures well below zero and wind chills anywhere from 35 to upwards of 50 below zero.  While many of us would consider it a pretty extreme event, it’s also pretty typical for January.  These types of numbers occur just about every year.  An arctic blast drops frigid air into the Upper Midwest and temperatures plummet well below zero.  What made this a little more unusual though is that the temperatures plummeted while it was breezy.  Typically when numbers drop into the teens and twenties below zero, the winds are close to calm which allows the cold dense air to sink the surface… often times the reason for the extreme cold in the first place.  But this time was a little different with winds sitting as high as 20 miles an hour allowing for frost bite to occur in about 10 minutes.  But as cold as it was, not a single record was broken, which tells you one thing; it could always be worse.  The graphics above show you the coldest temperatures over the weekend as well as the coldest metro temperature each winter over the last several years.