Northwest Iowa — January was a month of extreme temperatures in northwest Iowa, with the mercury in Sheldon seeing a 78-degree swing between the warmest and coldest temperatures of the month.
According to the Official Weather Facts, as recorded for the National Weather Service by KIWA Radio, the warmest high temperature of the month came on January 20th, when the mercury climbed to 50-degrees. There were six days during the month of January when the temperature topped out at 40-degrees or higher. The coldest high temperature for the month rang in the New Year, when the mercury struggled to reach 12-below zero for a high.
At the other end of the spectrum, the coldest low temperature of the month came on January 1st, when the mercury dropped to a bone chilling 28-degrees below zero.
The average high temperature for the month was 23-degrees, with the average low dropping to 4-degrees above zero. Despite some of the moderate highs we saw during the month of January, the average high temperature was actually 4-degrees cooler than January, 2017, when the average high reached 27-degrees, with the average low temperature in January last year matching this year’s average low of 4-degrees.
As for snowfall, Sheldon recorded a total of 12.25-inches of snow during the month of January, most of which came during the blizzard of January 22nd. That figure is up 3/4 of an inch from the 11.5-inch total that fell on Sheldon in January of last year.
