If you think your New Year's Eve will be cold, Alaska would like to have a word with you. Some year-end holidays have been downright brutal.
On Dec. 31, 1999, 26 years ago today, the village of Chicken, Alaska, near the border with Canada's Yukon Territory, plunged to 72 degrees below zero. That's a December cold record for the entire U.S., according to weather historian Christopher Burt.
It's also just 8 degrees shy of America's all-time cold record, 80 below zero, set at Prospect Creek, Alaska, on Jan. 23, 1971.
Also on Dec. 31, but in 1955, 70 years ago today, what Christopher Burt deemed Alaska's greatest snowstorm on record finally came to an end.
Thompson Pass, north of Valdez, measured 175.4 inches of snow from Dec. 26-31. That's about 14.6 feet tall, roughly twice the height of the National Basketball Association's tallest player right now (Zach Edey of the Memphis Grizzlies).
That was also the snowstorm of record in Anchorage, where 35.7 inches of snow fell from Dec. 26-30. By New Year's Eve, a record 47-inch snowpack was in place in Alaska's most populous city.
Burt also noted some rather impressive all-time records were also set on Dec. 31, including Europe's all-time record low (72.8 degrees below zero at Ust'Schugor, Russia, in 1978) and Earth's highest pressure at lower elevations (1083.8 millibars at Agata, Russia, in 1968).
(MORE:New Year's Weirdest Weather)
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him onBluesky,X (formerly Twitter)andFacebook.
