Coldest Places in United States (2024)

Lowest Temperatures

The lowest temperature ever recorded in the United States was -80 degrees Fahrenheit (-62 degrees Celsius) on January 23, 1971 at Prospect Creek Camp, located near the Arctic Circle along the Alaska pipeline. This is not much warmer than the -81.4 °F record low for North America that Snag in Yukon, Canada dropped to on February 3, 1947. On that extremely cold February day, Tanacross Alaska reached -75 °F.

The lower 48 states of the US hit their official coldest temperature of -70 °F on January 20, 1954 at Rogers Pass, Montana. The pass sits at 5,470 feet (1,667 metres) elevation in the Rocky Mountains, northwest of Helena.

Coldest Weather All Year

The coldest climate year-round in the United States is on Alaska's north coast, along the Beaufort Sea. This region has an annual temperature that averages around 13 °F (-10 °C).

South of Alaska, just two out of 7055 weather stations record an annual temperature that averages below freezing. Among all these stations that contributed quality data from 1991 to 2020 for NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), the peak of Mount Washington in New Hampshire has the coldest climate overall, with a mean temperature of 28 °F.

Fewer than 20 stations have an annual mean temperature of no more than 35 °F (1.7 °C). Another thing these sites have in common is that they're all over 6,000 feet (1,800 metres) elevation. Of the towns that make this list, the coldest is Crested Butte, a recreation resort located high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

Climbing down below 2,500 feet, the coldest places outside of Alaska have average temperatures above 35 °F. The locations listed below are a sampling of sites in states where the annual mean temperature is less than 40 °F (4.4 °C).

Places That Most often Have Freezing Temperatures

The weather station in the United States where it most frequently drops below freezing is not in the far north of Alaska, as you'd expect. Instead it's in California, a state known more for warmth than incessant cold.

Bodie lies at 8,369 feet (2,551 metres) elevation near the Nevada border, north of Mono Lake. The former mining town has more nights of frost than anywhere in Alaska. Not surprisingly, people gave up on living in Bodie and it's now a ghost town.

Still, not all places that frequently freeze are remote or abandoned. Small towns with a lot of icy nights include Stanley Idaho, Fraser Colorado, and Wisdom Montana.

The weather freezes most often at these US weather stations:

It's one thing to have a lot of frosty nights, but it's altogether another intensity of persistent cold when it doesn't thaw out during the day. A dozen weather stations in Alaska record freezing highs on over half the days in a year. At the top of the list is a site near Utqiagvik, which typically doesn't melt for 239 days a year.

Outside of Alaska, the weather stations ranked here most often have days that do not warm up to above freezing.

Most Days with Coldest Temperature

On any single day, the mountain town of Stanley, Idaho is most often the coldest place in the states outside of Alaska. Stanley is nestled in the midst of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area at 6,260 feet (1,908 metres) elevation.