The great arctic outbreak of December 1983

[Tim Vasquez]

For the Southern Plains, there has been no winter weather event in modern times with more overall impact than the December 1983 outbreak. The daily temperatures extremes were only exceeded by the December 1989 cold wave, but that was a "dry norther" with a short lifespan. The December 1983 outbreak was nearly as cold, and was very prolonged in Texas and Oklahoma. It was accompanied by significant "overrunning" and winter precipitation every few days.

This map from 2200Z (4 pm) on 12/24/1983 illustrates some of the crazy extremes. You can see in Arizona it's in the 70s, with part of Mexico in the 80s! Go a few hundred miles to the east and you're in the Antarctic chill. Notice how Gallup, NM is 48 degrees and Alamosa CO (usually the cold spot) is 33°F, but go east to Clayton where it's -1°F and Colorado Springs where it's -12°F. This would have been quite something to drive into on a cross-country eastbound on I-40 or I-10.

Again, this is an afternoon map.

Here is a visible satellite image from a couple of hours earlier (when there was more daylight). You can see upslope stratus on the west side of the Guadalupe Mountains in west Texas. At this point, Texas was under the influence of a ridge, in between two winter weather systems, but even with clear skies in Midland and Abilene you can see temperatures were struggling to 12°F.

DFW did not get above freezing until December 30. Houston made it above freezing on December 27th, reaching the mid-40s before another norther rolled through.

 

[Shawn Schuman]

That's fascinating. Thanks for sharing, Tim, makes me feel colder just thinking about it. It isn't often you see midday temperatures in the teens in the Trans-Pecos.

 

[GPhillips]

I remember that event, and that day very well. I was in southwest MN, home from college and on the afternoon of Dec 24th, we were driving out into the country to our uncle's farm for a Christmas Eve dinner. The temperature around 3 PM when we were driving was -16 F, which was the high for the day. Worse, the wind was from the north at 15 to 25 mph. That was the coldest high temperature day I've ever experienced. That was near the end of a 9 day stretch where the temperature never got above zero. Growing up in Minnesota, the cold had never really scared me, but that time, thinking about driving out in the country and something going wrong with the car in that type of cold, did.

Some TV meteorologist in the Twin Cities coined the term "The Siberian Express" for the jet stream pattern associated with the cold wave. Or at least that's how I remember it. I hope I never see anything like that again.

 

[Bob Schafer]

Awesome! I had just moved to Denver that year, and two friends from Ohio came out to go skiing with me.

I remember thinking before we drove up to ski that we were probably going to "die" from the cold in the mountains; i.e. that as cold as it was in Denver it must be about 40 below in the mountains! LOL Of course, it was actually warmer up in the mountains than back in Denver.

Per Channel 7 Met Mike Nelson's (the man who gave the eulogy at the Samaras memorial) 2007 book Colorado Weather Almanac: "Temperatures fell below zero for 115 straight hours in the Denver area, the longest period of subzero temperatures ever recorded... Scottsbluff: 140 straight hours, Cheyenne: 120 straight hours... shattering a record that had stood for 111 years (for Cheyenne)... December 1983 was the coldest December on record for more than two dozen cities from North Dakota to Colorado to Texas. ...the average temperature for the month was 17.4 degrees... This arctic express made December 1983 the second-coldest month ever in Denver, second only to the 16.9 degree average temperature in January 1930."

 

[Joshua Nall]

Some of my earliest weather related childhood memories were from this period. It's the only winter in my lifetime that my grandfather's pond froze over enough to walk across. I still remember very well one of my parents rather large friends falling on the ice and hearing it crack at impact. Some of my counsins were small enough to be placed in large dish pans and were flung from one side to the other. We all had a great time "skating" on the ice.

My family's land was situated right on the state line and my father had seen a very large buck cross the road just down from our house. So my mother decided to buy an out of state license to hunt the deer on some land she obtained permission to hunt across the state line. After paying 175, which was a lot of money for us, she hunted every oppurtunity in extreme cold that week, but never saw the deer. So anytime I say something about it being a little cold to sit on a stand, she says, "I did it for a week and it was 4 DEGREES!.. sissy."