Has it ever been colder in Madison? Yes...MUCH colder!

The weather in Madison has been exceptionally frigid. OK, let’s not kid ourselves – it’s been dreadful.

With low temperatures and strong winds, we’ve seen wind chills go into the negative-double digits. The next few days will seem like a heatwave compared to the last few we’ve had to deal with. In reality, it won’t be that much better:

Forecast from weather.com

It’s been a pretty cold week or so, and the next five days will remain cold. But the coldest day in Madison? For that, you have to go more than 60 years into the past.

January30, 1951 saw temperatures of -37°. That’s without wind chill. How did it happen? Here’s an article from Madison.com in 2011 that explains the two conditions that were needed:

First, a fresh and relatively deep snow cover is a great help as snow radiates infrared energy exceptionally well. With the long nighttime hours of mid-winter, by the end of the night, a lot of energy [had] been radiated away from the surface of the snow, chilling the air just above it. ...

Second, crystal clear nights are needed to maximize the amount of energy loss near the surface. The night of January 29-30, 1951, was crystal clear in Madison as a strong surface high pressure system was centered over Dubuque, Iowa. ... In fact, on the morning of January 30, the air temperature about 2 miles above the ground was minus-18 — a full 20 degrees warmer than the air at the surface.

It’s been pretty cold lately, but let’s be thankful it hasn’t been -37° cold...yet.