The average temperatures in 2022 were above the normal temperatures in East Tennessee, but there were record cold temperatures reported on Christmas Eve, the National Weather Service said.
The number of cold hours around Christmas in late December might have seemed long, but it was not a record-breaker, the NWS said.
“The arctic front that ushered in this outbreak of cold weather moved through during the early morning hours on December 23,” the NWS said. Between then and the end of the cold streak, several locations recorded more than 100 consecutive hours at or below freezing (32 degrees Fahrenheit). Wise, a city in southwest Virginia north of Tennessee’s Tri-Cities, reported 107 hours below freezing, the NWS said. That’s equivalent to about 4.5 days. Oak Ridge was below freezing for 106 hours and Knoxville for 104 hours, both also close to 4.5 days.
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