Cold Everywhere, But 0 With -50 Chill in NC

This map illustrates how chilly it really was early this morning across the U.S. -- in the 30s or below in every state in the nation except Florida:

But what the map doesn't show is that, in the North Carolina mountains, they've dipped to zero degrees overnight. Check out this list of temperatures below 12 degrees.

Mount Mitchell, NC: 0.7 (Wind Chill: -50!)
Grandfather Mountain: 6.9 (Archived)
Beech Mountain: 6.2 (Archived)
Wolf Laurel: 9.3 (Archived)
Rich Mountain: 9.2 (Archived)
Burnsville, NC: 10.4
Linville, NC: 11.0
Sugar Moutnain: 11.6 (Archived)

Technically, the Mount Mitchell reading of 0.7 F would have been the coldest temperature in the nation this morning, edging out Mount Washington, NH [JessePedia], who only fell to 1.5 or so.

WITH SNOW ON THE CAM...

Most of these readings didn't show up on the map above, or even on a map of low temperatures from MESOWEST (The Government Mesonet), because the stations are not connected to the national network. Thanks to Ronald for the tip and thanks to Ray's Weather Center who runs many of the stations above.

Mount Mitchell sported a wind chill reading of -50 F, and indeed even the networked stations that AccuWeather monitors indicated a -12 wind chill near Almond, NC this morning (WeatherMatrix Stats), the coldest spot in the nation, just barely edging out the general winner for worst weather, Mount Washington, NH [JessePedia], who, while in the single digits, had unusually calm winds this morning.

This cold weather is quite unusual for this time of year and stands in stark contrast to last week. I ran some statistics and if you look at the average temperature of the nation, it has fallen from 55 on April 4th to 35 today, and whether you look at land or population under 32 degrees, that number has increased from near 0% n April 3rd to close to 50% today.