Three Sheridan Area Temperature Records Broken During Recent Cold Snap

The recent cold snap that affected not just Wyoming, but most of the country, left its mark behind in the record books.

The National Weather Service Office in Billings, Montana says 3 temperature records in Sheridan County were broken this past Saturday and Sunday (January 13th and 14th).

Saturday had a record low temperature of negative 31 degrees fahrenheit, which was recorded at the Sheridan County Airport just before 7am.

The high temperature on Saturday was negative 9, making it the lowest-high temperature ever recorded for that day.

On Sunday, the low temperature was negative 24, making it a new record low for that day.

Luke Arends with the National Weather Service says even though an El Nino is still going on in the Pacific Ocean, which usually means a warmer than normal winter, Wyoming will still have cold moments here and there.

He adds that for as cold as it got, the one thing that didn’t happen was there wasn’t much snow accumulation, partially because it was too cold for snow to form.

“The temperatures, when they do drop that cold, it’s very hard to get accumulating snow with that, because we just lose the type of snowflakes that accumulate more efficiently and really any moisture that we have in the air, if it does form an ice crystal or a snowflake, it’s just going to be this really small, very fine ice crystal, so those do not accumulate well, but also there just wasn’t a whole lot of moisture to tap into with the set of that whole system.”

According to the forecast, beginning this Saturday, and at least thru Wednesday of next week, high temperatures are supposed to be in the middle 40’s.