What Was The Coldest Temperature Ever Recorded In Texas?

AUSTIN, TEXAS — As people in a wide swath of the U.S. Midwest hunkered down for historically low temperatures — bone-chilling, water-thrown-into-the-air-freezing, soul-sucking cold — we got to thinking: What was the coldest temperature ever recorded in Texas?

According to The Weather Channel, the coldest temperature was 23 degrees below zero. Though the report didn't provide a date, St. Louis Today reported it happened in the town of Seminole — the Gaines County seat located in West Texas just above the Texas Panhandle — on Feb. 8, 1933. But even then, that was a virtual warm front compared to the coldest temperature ever recorded in the country, reached in Alaska 48 years ago, when thermometers read 80 degrees below zero in Prospect Creek, near Fairbanks.

That's damn cold. As for the coldest temperature recorded in the continental U.S., that went into the meteorological history books at 70 degrees below zero in Rogers Pass, Montana, in 1954.

So how about Austin? Well, that depends on who you ask.

Records go back to 1898, with some missing data before 1927, Current Results weather officials noted. The lowest temperature measured during that time was -2 degrees Fahrenheit (-19 Celsius) on Jan. 31, 1949. Since 1939, temperature extremes were observed at Camp Mabry, according to the site. Before then, the weather station was at the University of Texas campus, weather officials noted. But Climatespy.com says during January the overnight temperature drops to an average of 42.8 degrees, with the lowest temperature of 17.1 degrees being recorded on Jan. 9, 2010.

According to timeanddate.com, Austin residents woke up to a chilly (yet relatively balmy as compared to elsewhere) low of 37 degrees on Tuesday. As this is being written at 6:45 p.m., we're sitting pretty at 51 degrees in Austin, according to the National Weather Service. Yet it feels like 48 degrees (brrr?), the weather service noted.

Despite the cold being experienced elsewhere in the country, no state will come close to breaking records this week — although that's not going to warm the hearts of people in the Midwest now experiencing dangerously cold weather. Some Minnesotans this week will see wind chills as low as 62 degrees below zero in some spots. The Twin Cities area woke up Tuesday with temperatures around 10 degrees below zero and wind chill readings estimated the temperatures felt more like a bone-chilling 32-below zero.

That's not all. Sub-zero temperatures and similarly fierce wind chills are also expected in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Ohio as a breakdown in the polar vortex blasts arctic cold south, leaving many states feeling more like Antarctica this week — only colder. The upshot: 75 percent of the continental U.S. is expected to see temperatures fall below freezing this week, CNN reported.

Accuweather says a low temperature of 42 degrees is expected as the low tonight here in Austin. Given what's happening elsewhere in the country, don't you dare of even thinking of complaining.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Get Patch's Daily Newsletters and Real Time Alerts

>>> Photo credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images