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How does this cold spell compare to others in other years? What are the records for coldest day and coldest spells? Thanks, Chris
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It has been cold around here with places in the single digits and other parts of Utah have seen lows at -20 or below in the past week here. Arctic air is to blame and it's been wearing out its welcome.
Anyhoo, a lot of people can't recall times it's been this cold but it has been before so let's look at some records. The NWS has a great page for this info, the link is on the right.
January usually averages 2 days with below 0 temperatures in SLC. With an annual average of roughly 3 or less days a year in Salt Lake with a minimum temperature below 0 degrees.
We've had several days below freezing for high temperatures so that begs the question of how many days below 32 is record territory. For consecutive days, January of 2004 takes the cake with 24 days in a row with a high of 32 or less degrees! The most days in one month with a high of 32 or less is 26 days which happened in 1949 and has happened in other years.
So far this January (and today is the 19th), we've had 8 days below freezing and 6 of them have been in a row, we'll likely make that number go up in the next few days. To get into record territory, we'll need to get to 14 straight days of below 32 temperatures.
The lowest temperature ever in Salt Lake was -30 in February of 1933. Also in January of 1949 there were 15 days of low temperatures below 0.
As far as inversion records go, I'll have to see if there is any recording keeping on that topic, I'll shoot a note to the NWS to see if they have data on those stats. But more than likely, records are kept for visibility and cloud cover so it would probably fall into that area.
Answered by Meteorologist Dina Freedman.
