COLUMBUS — If current forecasts hold, central Ohio will experience its coldest Christmas Day in nearly two decades on Sunday.
Temperatures are expected to drop into the single digits Thursday night and stay there until early Sunday, as a cold front bringing rain, snow and powerful winds makes its way across the Midwest.
ARCTIC BLAST COVERAGE: Tips from the Knox County EMA on how to stay safe this holiday season | The latest forecast for Knox County and north central Ohio
WeatherUnderground.com keeps an archive of daily weather data from major cities across the world, dating back to 1930. This data, retrieved from local airports, includes temperatures, precipitation amounts, wind speeds and more.
The last time central Ohio saw single-digit temperatures on Christmas Day, according to data from John Glenn Columbus International Airport, was in 2004. The low that day was 0 degrees; the high was 24.
This was part of a multi-day storm that brought the Buckeye State to its knees, leaving nearly 700,000 residents without electricity as snow, ice, wind and historically cold temperatures took down power lines and made travel nearly impossible.
Since then, central Ohio has enjoyed a wide range of Christmas Day temperatures. The low in 2005 was 0 degrees as well, but it quickly jumped to 35 degrees in 2006 and 26 degrees in 2007.
Temperatures have varied over the last 15 years, with the coldest Christmas Day in central Ohio taking place in 2020 (a low of 14 degrees) and the warmest taking place last year (a low of 49 degrees).
What is the coldest Christmas you can remember? Give us a year, a location, and a summary of what you remember from that day (or stretch of days), and we’ll publish it in a story on our website this weekend. You can email your memory to me by clicking this link.
