Now, I am not challenging the fact that Flagstaff gets awfully cold. It is very high up, after all. But most days below freezing? I’d just like to see a cite on that - it just seems hard to believe that a city in Arizona could be more consistantly cold than say, Minneapolis or Fairbanks. Or, I don’t know, whatever city in Wyoming is closest to the place I once camped in Yellowstone where there was snow on the ground in late June.
Sadly, my Google-fu seems to be entirely broken. I can’t find anything on the topic at all, other than that Wikipedia article. Anyone know anything more?
The article says “metropolitan area” with most days below freezing. Flagstaff has 52,000 people, so that puts it in competition with places like Duluth, Green Bay, Minneapolis, Fargo, etc.
I can’t be authoritative, but I am doubting this claim.
Well, no, not really. Unless I’m missing the part where it says how many days of a low below freezing per year, something that’s unlikely to be a major selling point on the city’s website.
Well, i went to this page and looked at the Monthly Weather Summary for Flagstaff for the last 12 months.
From December 1, 2004 through November 30, 2005, the minimum temperature at Flagstaff Airport was 32 or below on 205 days.
Also, according to the norms given with that data, this was exactly on par with the norm, i.e., the last year has not had an unusually high or low number of days with a minimum of freezing or below.
So, the number to beat seems to be 205. I’ll leave it to others to hunt down possible contenders, because it’s 3.20am and i’m off to bed.
Based on this, Flagstaff on average (based on climatology) has a low temperature above freezing for the first time on May 6th/7th (day 126), and the last time on day 287, giving a period of 161 days above freezing and 204 below.
Based on this site, Fairbanks, AK, has the first low above freezing on day 122, and the last time on day 268, giving us 146 days above freezing, which beats Flagstaff by 15 days.
Fairbanks has a population of nearly 30,000, so one can argue it isn’t a metropolitan area as big as Flagstaff.
Bismarck and Duluth both lose to Flagstaff, so the only spot that might beat it would be a high elevation city in the Rockies.
To add as data points (links if you really want them, but I already lost them and would have to re-search), Duluth is above freezing 185 days, and Bismarck is within 3 days of that.
Or to change it to days below freezing (all give or take one day).
Bismarck, 177 days
Duluth, 180 days
Flagstaff, 205 days
Fairbanks, 218 days
It depends on how you want to define a “day below freezing.” If it’s a day with the low below freezing, then Flagstaff beats both Duluth, International Falls and Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Days With Minimum Temp. Below Freezing
Duluth: 184
International Falls: 197
MSP: 156
Flagstaff: 209
However, if you compare the
Average Maximum Temperatures: (Dec/Jan/Feb/Mar)
Duluth: 20.7/16.2/21.7/32.9
I Falls: 16.6/11.9/19.3/32.8
MSP: 25.5/20.7/26.6/39.2
Flagstaff: 43.3/42.2/45.3/49.2
It looks as if all of the Minnesota cities will have more days with a high temp below freezing than Flagstaff.
I believe the actual statistic is that Flagstaff is the city in the lower-48 states that has the most evenings of below-freezing temperatures. It’s night-time lows the data refers to, not daytime highs.
… And Flagstaff is at 7000 feet or so. Makes a rather large difference. Most of those other places are very-near-sea-level altitudes.
~
As usual, Wikipedia is incorrect. As the previous post notes, it is correct only if you add the proviso of “in the lower 48 states.” Often, when considering data about coldness, Alaska’s data is ignored because it is assumed it is colder there than it is in the rest of the country. That is no reason that the website shouldn’t include the proviso.
Fairbanks and Anchorage are both Metropolitan Statistical Areas, so they aren’t disqualified for that reason.
They’re not metropolitan areas, so they won’t change Flagstaff’s title, but I thought this was interesting anyway.
Most Days Under Freezing (U.S.)- Barrow, AK, 321 days, pop. ~4500 (big surprise, eh?)
Most Days Under Freezing (Lower 48)- Alamosa, CO- 227, pop. ~10,000.
While I have doubts about the reliability of Wikipedia in general and the claim for Flagstaff over Fairbanks in particular -
There’s more to this than data showing the average frost-free period (growing season) during the year.
Flagstaff tends to have big temperature swings during the warmer months, with (for example) highs in the 70s and 80s then dipping down into the 30s at night. From what I have seen in daily statistics, Fairbanks doesn’t do this during its “warm” season. So maybe the idea is that Flagstaff dips below 32 often enough during spring, summer and early fall to claim the title.l
The specific claim in Wikipedia is that Flagstaff has the most number of days with low temperatures below freezing. That already has been documented as incorrect by three posters in this thread, and has nothing to do with frost free periods.
