Winter blast breaks cold records in Lubbock, South Plains

An Arctic cold outbreak blasted the region over the weekend and early this week, briefly transforming the High Plains into a setting that would host the Abominable Snowman … (OK, maybe not quite, but it may have seemed it — and even broke some records).

As the cold temperatures strengthened early Saturday evening, locals quickly flooded social media with their praises, memes and, mostly, complaints of such cold weather in Texas.

So, exactly how cold did it get in West Texas during the Arctic blast? Here is the Arctic blast by the numbers.

According to the National Weather Service office in Amarillo, the Arctic blast took only 25 minutes to lower temperatures by nearly 20 degrees from 34 degrees at 8:10 a.m. Saturday to 14 degrees at 8:35 a.m.

With wind chills all the way to negative 23 in the northwestern Panhandle, the National Weather Service office in Amarillo warned locals of the potential for hypothermia. On the South Plains, the wind chill dropped between negative 10 and negative 15.

From Sunday through Monday, the maximum temperature reached 18 degrees — a record-low for maximum temperature in Lubbock for the date of Jan. 14. The lowest actual temperature recorded in the region was negative 2 degrees in Bushland on Tuesday morning.

Another daily record was set Tuesday morning when Lubbock recorded a temperature of 5 degrees — beating the 93-year-old record of 6 degrees from 1930.

The highest wind gust recorded in Lubbock over the weekend was 45 mph on Saturday, while Amarillo recorded a gust of 34 mph. Additionally, the highest average wind — accounting for the average wind speeds of a two-minute duration — was 32 mph and 26 mph, for Lubbock and Amarillo, respectively.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Winter blast breaks cold records in Lubbock, South Plains