Courtesy: MNDNR State Climatology Office
The last week of 2017 will be one of the coldest final weeks of a year for many decades in Minnesota.
The period from Christmas Day to New Year's Eve was the second coldest end of the year in the Twin Cities. The Twin Cities had an average temperature of -3.0 degrees F. This made the end of 2017 the coldest in 132 years. The coldest final week of a year for the Twin Cities record (1872-2017) was in 1886 with a seven day average temperature of -4.7 degrees F. 1924 was knocked out of the second place spot with an average temperature of -1.8 degrees F. The coldest temperature in the state in December, 2017 was -42 at Cotton on December 28. There was also a record low at International Falls for December 27 of -37 degrees, breaking the old record of -32 for the date.
The cold air outbreak began on Christmas Day with a reinforcing shot of arctic air in time for the weekend before the New Year. In fact, the area of high pressure that was forecast to move to the southeast out of Canada on New Years Day produced some fairly high higher barometric pressure readings. On January 1 the pressure at Windom reached 30.77 inches or (1042 millibars) The record high pressure for Minnesota is 31.17 inches (1055.54 millibars) set on February 17, 1989 at International Falls.
Below is a list of cold weather records and reports gathered by the National Weather Service
RECORD EVENT REPORT...UPDATED NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DULUTH MN 249 PM CST TUE DEC 26 2017 ...NEW RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE SET AT INTERNATIONAL FALLS... A NEW RECORD LOW MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF -37 DEGREES WAS SET AT INTERNATIONAL FALLS TODAY. THIS BROKE THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF -32 DEGREES SET IN 1924. PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DULUTH MN 130 PM CST WED DEC 27 2017 ..TIME... ...EVENT... ...CITY LOCATION... ...LAT.LON... ..DATE... ....MAG.... ..COUNTY LOCATION..ST.. ...SOURCE.... ..REMARKS.. 0700 AM EXTREME COLD COTTON 47.17N 92.47W 12/27/2017 M-41 F ST. LOUIS MN CO-OP OBSERVER PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DULUTH MN 128 PM CST WED DEC 27 2017 ..TIME... ...EVENT... ...CITY LOCATION... ...LAT.LON... ..DATE... ....MAG.... ..COUNTY LOCATION..ST.. ...SOURCE.... ..REMARKS.. 0715 AM EXTREME COLD EMBARRASS 47.66N 92.20W 12/27/2017 M-40 F ST. LOUIS MN CO-OP OBSERVER