The Cryogenic Climate of Glens Falls New York

The airport is actually situated in Queensbury and is now called the Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport. The location of the airport can best be described as being in a rural location and in a "hollow". The elevation is 328 feet. The surrounding terrain is somewhat higher than the actual airport runway. The rural location and surrounding farmland allows for radiational cooling to occur at night. In addition the surrounding higher terrain allows for drainage of cool air down to the airport. And we also have an extensive snowpack across the region now. Yet another element that aids in "radiational" cooling.

For the longest I have wanted to organize a climatology database for this location using data from the Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC). Things that I wanted to do were show what were the warmest or coldest, wettest of a particular holiday or what was the longest heat wave for the site and so on. I started working on heat and heat waves for this location but be became sidetracked. Considering the cold wave we're going through now, it may not be a bad idea to continue this heat project but instead I decided to work on some of the colder aspects of the Glens Falls airport.

The Cold Facts 

Weather records for the airport go back to 1944. There are some periods of missing data for the months of January through April in 1944 and for the periods of April through October 1945 and February and March 1947.

On eleven separate occasions the airport has recorded a temperature of -30°F or lower. The lowest temperature recorded at the airport was -35° F on January 27, 1994. 1994 was a very cold winter here. The previous all-time record low of -34° F was set 11 days earlier. And on February 10 of that  year the thermometer dipped to -30° F.  In comparison Albany, NY's lowest temperature of record is -28° set on 19 January 1971. Albany has recorded a temperature of -20° or colder on 29 separate dates, while Glens Falls has recorded temperatures of -20° or lower a total of 129 times through January 2018!

   NUMBER OF OCCURRENCES OF A TEMPERATURE OF ≤ -30° F AT GLENS FALLS, NY

January 27, 1994   -35° (ALL-TIME Record low temp for location)

January 16, 1994   -34°

January 08, 1968   -33°

January 11, 1968   -33°

January 12, 1968   -33°

January 19, 1976   -32°

January 23, 1976   -32°

January 04, 1981   -31°

February 10, 1994 -30°

January 06, 1996   -30°

January 24, 2011   -30°

Our Current Cold Snap/"Deep Freeze"

Through January 7, 2017 the area has been enduring a 14 days stretch  with temperatures not surpassing 32° A "Deep Freeze" is defined as 10 or more consecutive days where the temperatures does not pass 32°. The last time Glens Falls had a deep freeze of 10 days was Feb 26 through Mar 6, 2014. The last time we had a 14 day deep freeze was Jan 17-30, 1987 and the last 15 day deep freeze was Dec 8-22, 1981. 

As excessive as this string of sub-freezing weather is (with many of the days and moreso nights accompanied by very low at times record temperatures) it can be worse. On 5 occasions there were 20 day stretches of sub-32° weather, there were each one occurrence of 21, 22, 24, 28, 29 and 34 day durations of deep freezes. 3 times each had 23 and 27 day ones.  Any guess what the longest stretch of days with a temperature < 32° for Glens Falls is?

40 DAYS! This happened in 1985 when from Jan 3 through February 11th the thermometer never rose past the freezing mark. Now that's a "Deep Freeze" for sure! In comparison the longest "Deep Freeze" for Albany, NY was 36 days in January-February 1945 (5 Jan through 9 February).

Reference:

Northeast Regional Climate Center NOWDATA for Glens Falls Airport. Access to the NOWDATA site through the following link : NRCC Regional Climate Data