How cold did it get in Lexington? Temperature dropped nearly 40 degrees overnight
Over the course of six hours, Thursday night into Friday morning, temperatures plummeted nearly 40 degrees in Central Kentucky as an arctic front brought severe cold across the Bluegrass.
The temperature reading at Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport went from 40 degrees just before 10 p.m. on Thursday to just 2 degrees at around 4 a.m. on Friday. But it got even colder.
By 9 a.m., temperatures bottomed out at -5 degrees and were accompanied by a -31 degree wind chill. The mercury won’t rise far above zero with Friday’s high forecasted to be 3 degrees around 5 p.m.
With the dangerously low temperatures and wind chill, the National Weather Service issued a Wind Chill Warning through at least 1 p.m. on Friday. According to the service, the warning is issued when the wind chill is “life threatening.”
“Brief wind chills slightly colder than -30 are even possible in some areas this morning,” the NWS office in Louisville wrote in a forecast discussion on Friday morning. “If venturing outside, leave as little exposed skin as possible. Frostbite can occur on exposed skin in less than 30 minutes.”
Lexington, Ky. record low temperatures
The wind chills felt Friday will likely be among the coldest recorded around Lexington in the month of December. The lowest-ever recorded this month was on Christmas Day in 1983 when the local wind chill was -33 degrees, the NWS in Louisville said earlier this week.
Lexington temperatures brought on by this winter storm aren’t quite to the lowest-ever recorded. The city’s record low is -21 degrees on January 24, 1963, NWS data shows.
The winter storm making its way across the country in recent days brought on other similar dramatic temperature drops. In Cheyenne, Wyo., on Wednesday, the temperature went from above freezing to near-zero in half an hour.
This story was originally published December 23, 2022 at 10:47 AM.