Winter cold by metro: January lows in 48 big metros

Winter doesn't have to change your lifting. What it changes is the walk: the daily steps that were easy in May get hard when it's dark at the hour you'd take them and cold the moment you step outside. How much that matters depends on where you live, and NOAA puts a number on it: the average January low at each weather station, from its 1991–2020 climate normals.¹

The table takes one station for each of 48 large U.S. metro areas: a station within 25 km of the Census Bureau's internal point for the metro's first-named city, preferring one with a complete record. That makes each row a reading at one spot near that city, not a metro average, so the station's name and distance are printed with it. San Francisco and San Jose have no figure, for the reasons given in their rows.

The table

The January low is the average daily minimum temperature for January over 1991 to 2020: a typical January night, not the coldest one. The distance is from the city's Census point to the station. A dagger (†) marks a value from a partial record, explained under the table. Each metro with a page on this site links to it, and the postal codes link to each state's page.

Download this table (CSV). Free to reuse with a link back to this page.

† Partial record: NOAA flags these values R (representative) instead of S (standard), with fewer years of record behind them. Years of record for the January low: Detroit (Dearborn #2) 13; Riverside–San Bernardino (Riverside Fire Stn 3) 20; San Antonio (San Antonio Incarnate Word) 17; San Diego (San Diego Montgomery Fld) 19. San Francisco has no NOAA normals station within 25 km of its Census point, so its row has no figure rather than a borrowed station's. San Jose has no figure either: the selection rule prefers a station with a complete record, and within 25 km the only one was Mt Hamilton, 1,282 m up, which describes a mountain, not the valley where the city is, so its climate figures were left out rather than printed from that station or swapped for another one by hand.

What stands out

• Minneapolis–St. Paul is the cold outlier. Its station (U Of Mn St Paul) averages a 5.5 F January low, the coldest of the 46 stations and 11.7 degrees below the next (Milwaukee Mitchell Airport, 17.2 F).
• Twenty-seven of the 46 stations average a January low below freezing, from Minneapolis–St. Paul (5.5 F) up to Raleigh (31.6 F) and Charlotte (31.8 F), just under 32. Memphis (33.3 F) is the first above it.
• North and south aren't the whole story. Atlanta's station averages a 35.6 F January low, colder than Seattle's (37.2 F) and Dallas–Fort Worth's (37.9 F). Miami's 61.0 F is the warmest of the 46; Tampa (52.8 F) and Los Angeles (51.9 F, at the UCLA station) follow.
• Close calls and ties. Detroit (19.4 F, a partial record) and Chicago (19.5 F) are a tenth of a degree apart, and so are Columbus (22.0 F), Providence (22.1 F), Kansas City (22.2 F) and Cleveland (22.3 F) in a row; Phoenix and San Diego tie at 46.0 F, Nashville and Washington at 30.1 F.

How to read your own station's row

A January low is the cold end of a typical January day, so it says the most about the hours a walk before or after work usually falls in. A low below 32 F on average means a typical January morning there starts below freezing. A normal is a 30-year average, not a forecast, and it's measured at the station, not at your door.

What winter changes in a training week

• The walk moves indoors. When it's dark and cold at walking time, take the steps somewhere warm and lit: a treadmill, an indoor track, laps of a big building, or a walking session at home. Same daily target, different place.
• The lifting doesn't change. Same days, same sessions, same progression as in summer. Winter is a reason to move the walk, not to pause the plan.
• Get to the gym on purpose. In a cold month the hard part is leaving the house. Pack the bag the night before, go straight from work, or train at home on the worst days with a three-day dumbbell plan.
• Keep a floor. When the weather wins a week, a 30-minute session keeps it from going to zero. Never miss twice holds in January too.

Related tables: summer heat at the same stations, rain and commute times by metro, how active your metro and your city are, and commute times by state.

Where the numbers come from

NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information publish the U.S. Climate Normals for 1991 to 2020. The January low is the January value of the normal daily minimum temperature from the Monthly Climate Normals.¹ Each value was read from the station's own normals file, with NOAA's completeness flag and years of record, on October 22, 2026, and checked the same day by a second, independent re-fetch: every value, flag and year count matched.

How the station was chosen: the metros are the 25 largest metropolitan statistical areas by the Census Bureau's 2024 population estimates and the 23 other metros among the 50 largest that have a page on this site. For each, up to six stations within 25 km of the Census Bureau's internal point for the first-named principal city were considered, preferring one with standard flags on every value; the distance in the table is from that point. A station describes its own spot, and normals apply less well the farther you are from the station. San Francisco has no station within 25 km of its point, and San Jose's only qualifying station is on a mountain, so neither has a figure here.

If you reuse the table, cite NOAA: Palecki, M., Durre, I., Applequist, S., Arguez, A., Lawrimore, J. (2021). U.S. Climate Normals 2020: U.S. Monthly Climate Normals (1991-2020). NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. A link back here is appreciated.

If you want a week that already knows what January is like where you live, apply.