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That's Cold, Doubly So When You Realize the Temperature Was In Great Smoky Mountains National Park

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Normally when you hear "22 below" you think of places like Fraser, Colorado, or Ice Box Canyon, North Dakota, not Tennessee.

But that was the temperature near the top of Great Smoky Mountains National Park early the other morning.

The winter caretaker at the park's Mount LeConte Lodge (elevation a mere 6,593 feet in case you're wondering) reported a low Tuesday night/Wednesday morning of -22 degrees. That's the coldest on record at the lodge since 1986 and the fourth coldest day since they started keeping records there in 1978.

Besides being 22 below, the park's closest weather station with wind measuring equipment - Cove Mountain in Sevier County, Tennessee - reported gusts up to 45 mph that night, as well. That works out to a wind chill of -60 degrees. In case you're wondering, at 60 below exposed flesh will be frostbitten in 4 minutes.

The lodge's coldest reading on record was -32 degrees on Jan 21, 1985, but the lack of wind speeds for that date make it impossible to say whether that night's wind chill was more brutal than that of the other night.

Comments

lets hope we dont see the penguin from cut bank montana on u.s. 441.


Obviously a "global warming" thing. Yeah right...


Global warming (or cooling for that matter) deals with the overall climate of the planet, not with the weather at one particular place on one particular night.


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