United States

The Coldest Weather I`ve Ever Seen!

January 17, 2009; 9:41 AM ET

UPDATE: The State College NWS office has listed these low temperatures, as cold as -28 in Nanty Glo, PA.

Folks, I'm blown away by the temperatures we are seeing in Pennsylvania this morning. In the last 24 hours, I have experienced the coldest daytime and nighttime temperatures in my life. Yesterday at 5 PM, when I left AccuWeather HQ, the car thermometer read 0 degrees (and it was still light out!) Then last night, the weather station at my house registered -15, that's 15 degrees below zero.

I think once of twice since I've lived here (12 years) we had dipped to -4 or -5 here in State College, Pennsylvania, home of AccuWeather HQ [Google Map]. And once when I was a kid (Jan. 20th, 1985) I experienced similar temperatures at night. So this blows it all away.

Below is a list of local temperatures observed by AccuWeather meteorologists; an average of readings performed by an AccuWeather meteorologist last night indicated -25 in "The Barrens" at Scotia Range [Google Map] - typically the coldest place in Centre County, if not Pennsylvania.

These extreme temperatures compared to yesterday were courtesy Radiational Cooling (WikiPedia). At this time it doesn't look like places outside of PA experienced temperatures much below yesterday morning.

NCDC says that, for yesterday, 117 daily record lows were broken nationwide, and 167 daily record low highs were set. A number of them were monthly or all-time records. You can click through NCDC for details.

PSU officially only fell to -2, which pales in comparison to their -18 on Jan. 18 & 19, 1994. The airport (KUNV) fell to -4 this morning, beating their low of -2 in 1994. How far back do we go before that? Records don't really exist (KUNV is not an official climatic station).

OFFICIAL NWS 8 AM TEMPERATURES (SEE AMATEUR STATIONS)

Summary Of Saturday Morning in Centre County:

Brett (Stormstown): -22

Walker Building: -2.6

Temps Below -15 Outside of Centre County:

Sterling Run: -18

Claysburg: -16

Summary Of Lows Yesterday (NOTE DIFFERENT TIMES!):

Elliot Abrams' House (Port Matilda): -3 (7:52 AM)

PSU Walker Building -0.6 (11:30 PM)

Data Obtained From:

AccuWeather Centre County Mesonet

My Weather Station

MESOWEST Map

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of AccuWeather, Inc. or AccuWeather.com