New Year’s Almost 100 Degrees In Texas And Idaho Ice Storm
Good year! It may be January, but the weather hasn’t always been freezing or snowy over the holidays.
On January 1, 2022, four years ago today, a weather station in Texas’ Lower Rio Grande Valley reported a high of 99 degrees. According to weather historian Christopher Burt, this reading at Falcon Lake Dam, between Laredo and McAllen, constitutes both the warmest New Year’s and January temperatures ever recorded in the United States.
That’s 20 degrees warmer than Death Valley, the hottest place in America, has ever recorded on New Year’s Day.
On the other end of the spectrum, Maybell, Colorado, plunged to minus 60 degrees on Jan. 1, 1979, the coldest New Year’s Eve temperature ever recorded in the continental United States, according to Burt.
As if that wasn’t enough, on New Year’s Day 1961, an unprecedented ice storm due to both freezing fog and freezing rain left up to 8 inches of ice accumulation in northern Idaho, causing widespread damage to trees and residents trapped in their homes without power.
(MORE: The strangest New Year’s weather)
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at Weather.com and has covered national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Contact him on Blue sky, X (formerly Twitter) And Facebook.
