CHICAGO — Think it was cold Monday? It was nothing like the history-making temperatures on this date 40 years ago.
On January 20, 1985, the mercury bottomed out at a bone chilling -27 degrees and was accompanied by a brutally cold wind chill of – 57 degrees.
The polar vortex dropped into the Great Lakes region on January 19, helping accelerate the movement of intensely cold air southward.
The arctic cold front reached the Carolinas during the morning of January 20 and by that evening had pushed through all of Florida and into Cuba.
Across North and South Carolina, the coldest morning of the event was January 21, 1985, a date which shows up in most city’s record books for the lowest temperatures ever observed.
-Chicago weather records go back to 1871.
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