Coldest late-winter airmass in decades for central United States

It ranges from frozen to frozener across the Lower 48 east of the Rockies this Thursday. An Arctic outbreak is reaching its peak footprint before slowly waning in coverage heading into the weekend. In a warming world, there are still occasional extreme cold shots, and the numbers show that this is one of those cases.

Weather Watch

Cold outbreak. The United States and southern Canada remain in the grips of a late-season Arctic outbreak. More than 120 record lows and record cold highs are forecast Thursday from the northern Plains to the Gulf Coast. Temperatures near or below zero have extended as far south as northeast Oklahoma and northern Arkansas this morning.

Winter is coming. Yesterday, it was North America bathed in the coldest air relative to average on the planet. Antarctica must have heard the news and needed to reassert itself as boss. The first temperature of minus-60 or lower of 2025 was breached late Feb. 19, when a minus-60.2 was recorded at Dome Fuji AWS.

Lightning links

Frozen mess after Detroit water main break.

Fog harvesting could provide water for arid cities.

Low T Thursday

For a second straight day on Wednesday, the mesonet in North Dakota saw temperatures dip as far as they have since its debut in 1989. A reading of minus-47 was observed near New Hradec in the state’s west.

The director of the network, Daryl Ritchison, pointed out that the hottest and coldest temperatures observed on the North Dakota mesonet occurred over the past year, with a range of minus-47 to 111.

Broken Bow in central Nebraska has seen temperatures fall to at least minus-31 this morning. Since 2000 — prior to this year — the coldest temperature this late in the season was minus-15 in 2003.

In Oklahoma City, a low of at least 4 degrees is the coldest this late in the season since 1960, when it fell to 3 degrees. Only 1948 has been colder than both 1960 and 2025 so late, with low of 1 degree on March 11.

About

Weekday morning newsletter by a journalist/forecaster that connects weather and climate change dots while occasionally stirring the pot.

Find this interesting? Forward it on and tell a friend!