If you love the cold you must be in heaven this morning.  We are awakening to sub-zero temperatures that have now set records for two days in a row. 

Last night at 6:35pm the temperature at Denver International Airport reached a frigid -18 degrees.  This breaks the 107 year old record of -14 degrees for December 14th set way back in 1901. 

This morning the mercury dropped a bit further to -19 degrees at 2:31am.  That absolutely smashed the previous record low temperature for December 15th of -6 set in 1951.

Here in Thornton, ThorntonWeather.com also set records for low temperatures since we first went online in October 2006.  At 6:06am this morning the mercury was at a mere -14 degrees thus breaking our previous all-time cold temperature record of -13.3 degrees set on February 2, 2007.  At 4:08am we recorded a wind chill of -25.3, an all time record for us as well.  Certainly our record keeping hasn’t been going on as long as the official Denver ones but it is still pretty neat to see. 

As dawn approached, our temperature map from the Rocky Mountain Weather Network showed many stations across the Front Range reporting temps in the negative teens.  With daybreak, we won’t see much of a warm up either  as we will only reach a high of 16 degrees today.   Denver’s official record low maximum for this date set back in 1914 is 19 degrees so there is a pretty good chance that will be a third record set.  Tonight we are expecting a touch of snow, maybe an inch is about it.

When will the cold end?  Not for the foreseeable future unfortunately.  Long range forecasts going out to next Sunday do not show even one day with temperatures above freezing and there is a slight chance of snow almost every day.

This severe cold almost assures rough travel conditions as the sun isn’t helping to melt the lingering snow.  Please be safe out there and allow plenty of time to arrive at your destination.