30th Anniversary: The Great Cold Outbreak of 1985

This morning, 30 years ago, I awoke to the coldest temperatures I had ever recorded in my paper weather logs. (I was 10 years old at the time.) It was -5 degrees F at my house in Boomer, North Carolina, at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains.

The cold outbreak of Jan. 21, 1985, was here. Temperatures had fallen below zero across the Deep South and were in the single digits on the Carolina and Gulf coasts. This map shows the lowest temperatures (click through for a station-by-station list):

Nationally, the NWS in Wilmington says, "According to newspaper reports at least 165 fatalities were attributed to the weather. The inauguration parade for President Reagan's second term was canceled with wind chills in Washington DC colder than -10° F. Florida's Secretary of Agriculture termed this the "freeze of the century" with the state's citrus industry suffering $2.5 billion in losses."

In North Carolina, temperatures fell to zero on the coast, and the state set a new record low of -34 F at Mount Mitchell. Virginia and South Carolina also set new state records. The NWS reports: "Local impacts from the exceptionally cold weather included record-high electricity usage which exceeded the previous record by 12 percent, burst water pipes in municipal buildings, homes and businesses; there were many house fires around the region due to improper use of space heaters. Firefighters faced the unusual problem of their water hoses freezing while attempting to fight fires. Some local school systems operated on delayed schedules while others canceled classes entirely until the weather warmed."

I was so excited about the extreme temperature readings that I created a special report on my Commodore 64 Dot Matrix printer!