MAP: Coldest temperatures experienced over our mild winter

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) - Despite the fact that another mild winter has passed us, if you were to base how cold our winter was by the lowest temperature recorded, you wouldn’t think it was a mild winter at all.  A significant and somewhat unusual cold snap hit much of the central US in early to mid-December, dropping temperatures into the teens and 20s below zero as far south as Kansas City and Chicago. 

Around here, the metro hit 20 below zero for the first time in several years. This cold snap constituted the coldest air we saw over the winter and for much of the central US.   

With the exception of the Arctic regions of Canada, almost everyone else in North America saw a more typical lowest temperature date this winter, in January.  Amazingly, parts of northern Canada didn’t see their coldest temps until the first week of March, when the thermometer dropped to nearly 70 below zero. 

And for those hoping to move to a warmer climate someday, the only spots in North America that didn’t get a freeze this winter was a sliver of southwestern Arizona and southeastern California, most of the LA basin southward to San Diego, and the southern half of Florida.