Coldest States, North Dakota Leads (2026)

1. NOAA 1991 to 2020 monthly climate normals · 1991-2020
2. NOAA 1991 to 2020 hourly climate normals

How we got this. The Cold Score is The Honest Local’s own recipe. Each source ranks every place on its own from 0 to 100 and the score is the average, so a place has to do well on all of them to lead. The same idea as our heat list, run for cold. We blend the January average low from NOAA's climate normals with the January average wind chill at the same station, since the thermometer alone misses how much colder the wind makes a place feel. Each source ranks every place on its own and the average of the two ranks is the score that decides the list. The number we show you is still the plain January low. A city uses the station nearest to it. For a state we never hand you one city's reading and call it the state's. We take its five largest cities, weight them by population, and run every source across all five. It refreshes when NOAA reissues its climate normals, about once a decade (the current set covers 1991 to 2020). For North Dakota, that means population-weighted across Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks, Minot and West Fargo (2024 Census population estimates), never one city standing in for the whole state; January mean min is each city's own nearest NCEI station reading, 1991-2020 normal.

Rankings by The Honest Local from public data, one page per list, refreshed on each source’s own cycle. Places with no reading are left out rather than estimated. Every value on this page carries its source in the page’s structured data.

Photos Shutterstock · Shutterstock/Greg Browning.