A large area of high pressure sat over the northern Plains on this date in 1996, with very cold and dense air at the surface. From the National Weather Service in Des Moines: “Extremely cold temperatures that began on January 31st in Iowa persisted into early February with wind chills as low as -79 F at Mason City on the morning of the 2nd and high temperatures of -20 F recorded at Elkader and Oelwein that afternoon. Temperatures finally bottomed out on the 3rd with all-time record lows occurring across the region, including -47 F at the Osborne Conservation Center southwest of Elkader which tied the all-time Iowa low temperature record set in 1912. All-time records were broken on the morning of the 3rd at about 20 percent of the official observing sites around Iowa including Albia with a low of -31 F, Muscatine and Toledo at -34 F, Belle Plaine and Indianola at -35 F, Fayette at -40 F, and Chariton where the reading of -38 F broke their all-time record which was set just three days earlier on January 31st. Over the four days from January 31st through February 3rd the statewide average temperature was -13.5 F making it the second-coldest four day stretch on record in the state. Des Moines reported an unprecedented 132 consecutive hours below zero from January 30th into February 4th.”