Washington set new record low temperatures January 1st and 2nd to start 2018.

According to the National Weather Service, the low temperature on January 1st was -22 degrees and it was -23 degrees on the 2nd. State Climatologist Harry Hillaker explains many parts of Iowa have set record lows within the last week, “Going back to 2017, the lowest temperature we had for the whole calendar came at midnight New Year’s Eve at Sioux City when it got down to 24 below zero, which had been the lowest Iowa temperature for last year. It waited as late as it could in the year for that to happen. But colder yet, the first few days of 2018, so far the lowest official temperature in the state was 29 below zero up in Sheldon on the morning of the 2nd. But virtually every place in the state setting daily record lows either on New Year’s Day or January 2nd.” He added that many of the records that were broken across Iowa had been long standing, some had been set in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Hillaker says the outlook is for an overall colder than normal January in Iowa.