Temperatures in Kansas can swing wildly in a given day, particularly in the Fall, when Arctic air can plunge in to the region. These are sometimes called “Blue Northers”. On Nov 11, 1911, one such plunge gave the area one of its most dramatic cold wave of record. During the early morning hours, temperatures across the Central Plains ranged from 68 degrees at Kansas City to 4 above at North Platte. In Kansas City, the temperature warmed to a record 76 degrees by late morning before the arctic front moved in from the northwest, and the mercury began to plummet. By early afternoon it was cold enough to snow, and by midnight the temperature had dipped to a record cold reading of 11 degrees above zero. In southeastern Kansas, the temperature at Independence plunged from 83 degrees to 33 degrees in just one hour.
Mary Knapp, Weather Data Library
mknapp@ksu.edu