While the 2025 inauguration's swearing-in ceremony wasforced indoors by cold weather, there was one such day even colder.
Jan. 21, 1985, 41 years ago today, was the coldest inauguration on record. Ronald Reagan was sworn in for his second term on a day in which the morning low was 4 degrees below zero and the midday reading was only 7 degrees.
It did eventually reach 17 degrees by the afternoon, but wind chills in the afternoon were in the teens and 20s below zero.
Due to the bitter cold, the swearing-in ceremony had to be held indoors and the parade was canceled.
This was duringone of the most extreme U.S. cold wavesin which all-time record lows were set in Chicago (minus 27), Daytona Beach (15) and Nashville (minus 17), among other cities. All-time state record lows were set in North Carolina (minus 34 at Mt. Mitchell), South Carolina (minus 19 at Caesar's Head) and Virginia (minus 30 at Mountain Lake).
Before the 20th Amendment was enacted, Inauguration Day was March 4, the day of the year on which the first Congress convened after the Constitution took effect in 1789. The coldest March inauguration was in 1873, when Ulysses S. Grant began his second term with a midday temperature of only 16 degrees after what is still a March all-time record low of 4 degrees.
At what would later be named Ronald Reagan National Airport, it has only dropped to minus 4 degrees (or colder) once since that Inauguration Day, duringanother historic cold outbreakin mid-January 1994.
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.
