Bitter cold temperatures were reported all over Colorado on Wednesday morning.
We saw lots of negative 20s and even a negative 31 in Alamosa, but believe it or not - no records were reported.
A very cold storm moved across Colorado over the last couple of days, bringing frigid air down from the Arctic.
Cold air is very dense and heavy, so most of it sank into the valleys of western Colorado. This set up surface-based inversions with no way for the cold air to rise or be moved out by winds from another weather system.
Three to 6 inches of fresh snow cover in those valleys also prevented the ground from warming too much on Tuesday.
Then the clouds cleared out just before dark Tuesday night, allowing what little warm air there may have been to escape into space. This is called radiational cooling.
This is the perfect recipe for temperatures to plummet rapidly overnight.
A Colorado State trooper posted a reading of -31 from his car in Alamosa Wednesday morning. The official low in Alamosa was -21 at the airport. The record low is -50 there back in January 1948.
The coldest temperature ever recorded in Colorado was -61 in Maybell in February 1985. Nearby Craig hit -28 Wednesday morning, which was Colorado’s lowest temperature of the day.
In the Yampa Valley, Ginny Rangitsch sent us a pic from her carmometer Wednesday morning. -24 near Steamboat Springs.
Grand Junction hit -4 Wednesday morning, the lowest temperature there in nearly 2 years.
Denver dropped to 3 degrees on Wednesday morning.
The lowest temperature ever recorded there was -29 way back in 1875, but Denver has hit -25 several times with the last time being December of 1990.