Extreme Cold/Wind Chill — Livingston, Missouri

2021-02-14 · Livingston, Missouri

Event narrative

In the first night of bitter cold across the area, temperatures dropped well below zero and with winds around 10-20 mph wind chills overnight going into Sunday morning dropped to around 20 to 30 below.

Wider weather episode

On February 5, a cold air mass settled into the center part of the country, which caused temperatures to go below freezing. They would not return to the freezing/melting point until several weeks later. The worst of the cold snap occurred between February 14 through February 16. Aside from the cold air arrival, several inches of snow fell, which allowed the already historically cold airmass to hold together. Minimum temperatures on Monday the 15th and and Tuesday the 16th reached negative double digits, and daytime highs across the area failed to reach zero degrees. In Kansas City, this marked the first time for a negative high temperature since a previous historic cold air outbreak in December of 1989. Even more rare was the 10-20 mph wind that accompanied the cold airmass, which caused wind chills each day to approach the 20 to 30 degree below zero mark.

Some benchmarks that were hit during this cold outbreak: New daily record low temperatures were established at Kansas City on February 15 and 16. On February 15 the low at Kansas City International Airport - the official measuring site - dropped to -10 degrees, which broke the previous record of -6 degrees from 1936. On February 15, Kansas City did not warm up to zero, making it the first sub-zero high temperature since December 22, 1989. On February 16 the overnight low dropped even lower, recording a temperature of -13 degrees. This broke the daily low of -8 degrees, set in 1979.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 933298. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.