Happy New Year! It may be January, but the weather hasn't always been either frigid cold or snowy on the holiday.
On Jan. 1, 2022, four years ago today, a weather station in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas reported a high of 99 degrees. This reading at the Falcon Lake Dam between Laredo and McAllen is both the hottest New Year's Day and January temperature on record in the U.S., according to weather historian Christopher Burt.
That's 20 degrees hotter than Death Valley, America's hottest place, has ever recorded on New Year's Day.
On the other end of the spectrum, Maybell, Colorado, once plunged to minus 60 degrees on Jan. 1, 1979, the coldest New Year's day temperature on record for the continental U.S., according to Burt.
If that wasn't chilling enough, on New Year's Day 1961, arecord-breaking ice stormfrom both freezing fog and freezing rain left up to 8 inches of ice accumulation in northern Idaho, leaving widespread damage to trees, and residents stuck in their homes without power.
(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.
