Saturday, January 17, 2009

How Low Can it Go?

After several years of mild winters, the Hudson Valley has been blasted by an arctic air mass. This frigid air blew out of Alaska where temperatures fell as low as -69 degrees! While we didn’t experience those types of extremes around here, Yonkers has not seen temperatures near zero in several years. Areas up and down the Hudson saw wind-whipped snow and temperatures falling below zero. Large sheets of ice now cover the river.

Saturday’s temperature of 3 degrees begs the question, how low can it go? Well, all we have to do is take a look back into the record books. On February 9, 1934, Central Park fell to an all-time record low of -15 degrees. Moving upriver, Albany saw the temperature drop all the way to -28 degrees on January 19, 1971. Will we ever see temperatures that low again here in the Hudson Valley? I think that is a question which will be debated for some time to come.

Jason Muller
Educator/Technology Specialist