Old B Square

How cold is 2019 so far? (Cold enough for you? No.)

According to the Hazardous Weather Outlook provided by the National Weather Service, “dangerously cold air” will move into the Bloomington area by Tuesday night (Jan. 29), and drop the temperature below zero.

The forecast low temperature for Tuesday is around -3 F.

For Wednesday, the low is expected to be a couple degrees warmer at -1 F.

That’s still not as cold as last year. By this time in 2018, Bloomington had already seen a low of -7 F, which was logged on Jan. 2, 2018. That set a daily record low temperature, for the period of record maintained by the NWS, which dates back to 1895.

Four more record lows were in the books by the end of 2018: April 29 (31 F); April 30 (31 F); Oct. 22 (26 F); and Nov. 11 (17 F).

r-out-bloomington-temps-jan-25-2019 — In 2018, five daily low temperature records were set: Jan. 2 (-7 F); April 29 (31 F); April 30 (31 F); Oct. 22 (26 F); and Nov. 11 (17 F).

Based on NWS records, the first half of January this year has seen daily low temperatures that are higher than normal. Through the first 19 days of the year, the low temperature for 5 days was below normal. That period still averaged 7 degrees above normal.

On Jan. 20 the daily low temperature dropped to 13 F, which was followed by three days with lows of 1 F, 0 F, and 0 F.

r-out-bloomington-temps-jan-25-2019-highlight — Forecast temperatures for Bloomington through Jan. 30 put the daily low on Tuesday and Wednesday (Jan. 29 and Jan. 30) next week at -3 F and -1 F, respectively. Even if temperatures drop that low, it will be a few degrees warmer than the record low temperatures for those dates: -10 F (Jan. 29) and -12 (Jan. 30).

Thursday’s low is expected to be back up around 8 F, according to the NWS forecast.

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