Sometimes, just looking at the high and low temperatures for a day can hide some very important details. A good example occurred on this date in 1982.

The high temperature on January 17 of that year was officially 13^oF. Yes, there have been colder days, but that 13^oF doesn't tell the whole story. If you dig a little deeper, you'll find that the 13^oF reading occurred right at midnight at the start of the day - and it was all downhill from there. By 8am, the temperature fell to -6^oF, and it was still just -2^oF at noon. And later that afternoon, the temperature recovered - if you can call it that - to 0^oF. And then it fell back to -6^oF that evening.

What this means is that on this date back in 1982, we had one of the most bitter daylights in this area's history, a period from sunrise to sunset when the temperature literally got no higher than 0^oF.