Here Is When The Coldest Day On Average Comes To The Mt. Pleasant-Sturtevant Area

MT. PLEASANT-STURTEVANT, WI — Climatologists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a new interactive map showing the average coldest day of the year at monitoring stations across the United States, updated to reflect the latest climate normals through 2020.

For our neck of the woods, the maps may offer some hope to those strained by the days of cold weather and intense wind-chill we had this past week. The coldest day of the year on average from 1991-2020, measured in Racine, was Jan. 24.

At Mitchell International Airport, the average coldest day during the same time span was Jan. 23. Further inland in Racine County, near Union Grove, the average was Jan. 22.

Forecasters at the National Weather Service Milwaukee said the cold snap that set in over Wisconsin this past week was "the coldest air of the season." Along with the cold air, wind chills brought much of Wisconsin to temperatures that can cause frostbite in less than an hour.

View an interactive map charting the coldest days of the year on NOAA's website.

NOAA says the temperature normals can help to guide long-term planning for economic sectors. They can help energy companies to predict peak demand, and construction and tourism to plot out their seasons, the NOAA said. While the 30-year averages help paint a broad picture, there is plenty of room for seasonal deviations and climate patterns like La Niña.

For other parts of Wisconsin and the Great Lakes area, the coldest day may yet be ahead.

Here are some other average cold days from around our region:

• In Madison, at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, the coldest day of the year is on average Jan. 24.
• In La Crosse, the coldest day of the year is on average Jan. 21.
• In Rhinelander, the coldest day of the year is on average Jan. 27.
• Near Marquette, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the coldest day of the year is on average Feb. 2.

The maps reveal several interesting regional differences in the US, NOAA writes. Parts of the Western US typically reach their climatological coldest day in December, but most of the Eastern US reaches their seasonal minimums in January.

"The West is profoundly influenced by the flow of moderating air masses with clouds and precipitation coming off the Pacific Ocean and aligns more closely to the seasonal solar cycle," NOAA writes, "while the East is responding to cold air flowing south from Canada that is modified by snow cover reflecting solar radiation away from the surface."

"Compared to the 1981-2010 version of this map, there has been a small but noticeable shift of the coldest day to dates 3–6 days later or more at many stations in the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains," NOAA wrote. "This is not surprising given that early winter warming is more pronounced than late winter warming between the new and previous Normals periods in this region. While the far northwestern U.S. also shows a shift of the coldest day to a later time, the rest of the western U.S. does not show a consistent pattern, with some stations actually shifting to earlier coldest day times."

Lucas Combos, Patch Staff, contributed to reporting and writing.