On vacation this week and drove the North Cascades Highway in Washington yesterday. About 1, my wife and I stopped and had a nice lunch at the Lake Diablo viewpoint, this is about the half way point of the highway. It was a pleasant 73 degrees but felt warmer due to the altitude. We left about 2 and headed east. About the time we got to Washington Pass 30 minutes later it was raining and the temps were dropping. We hit a low point of 43 degrees and it was raining hard. Soon we entered the Methow Valley and I notice the temps were heading back up. In a 10 minute span we went from 47 to 77 degrees. By the time we hit Winthrop, it was a warm 79 degrees. I know I have never seen such a swing in the temperature like this before.
Altitude will do it to you. Was in Denver last Saturday. On off cloudy but 70 degrees. Drove 100 miles to my house at 11,200 feet elevation and it was snowing.
Even out here in the Midwest where it’s flat, when a front comes in, you can sometimes get a drop of about 20F within a few minutes without even moving anywhere. It’s not exactly usual to get that much an extreme that quickly, but it happens. I remember hears ago sitting outside at a pizza place enjoying 85F weather when, right before a storm blew in, the temp just fell to below 70 in a few minutes. Went from reasonably hot to “I need a jacket or at least a long sleeved shirt” weather for me.
ETA: Apparently, it more has to do with shifting wind patterns and Lake Michigan here for us. According to this, the record in Chicago for quickest drop is 22F change in 150 seconds. And the greatest 1-day change is a whopping 52 degrees, from 62 to 10.
In the spring and summer up here by Lake Superior, you ALWAYS have a jacket or sweater with you just in case. It will go from 80 degrees to 50 degrees in a few minutes. Once the wind switches and comes off the lake…good luck. It’s like someone turned on a giant air conditioner.
In Texas, I’ve seen 40+ degree drops with strong cold fronts. Not in a matter of minutes like the OP, but definitely over the course of a few hours.
I’ve gotten to the point where if we have an unusually warm day, I check the weather because that is often a harbinger of a strong cold front.
December 17, 2016 was personally particularly memorable. Warm and humid in the morning (81F/67%), and still warm and pleasant (72F/84%) at 5:53 PM when I started to go inside a store to finish my Xmas shopping. One hour later, it was 49 degrees, raining, and windy with gusts over 30 MPH. Sounded like a truck hit the building when the front arrived. It eventually got to 36F early the next morning.
Chinooks can make it much warmer, much quicker—Spearfish, S.D., famously rose almost 50F in 2 minutes—but that day was the craziest I’ve personally seen weather change over the course of an hour.
I was just going to mention Chinook winds and their impact on temperature swings.
In the early 80s I was living in Havre, MT. We’d had days and days of sub-zero temperatures, hovering in the -30s. It got old.
As the Christmas holiday approached, my then-husband and I decided to do a runner to Las Vegas to visit his family and get away from the cold.
On the morning we left, the Chinooks started to blow as we headed toward Great Falls for our flight. The road was closing behind us due to the drifting snow.
By the time our flight departed, temps were in the low 60s.