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Monday's low temperatures breaks 102-year-old Tulsa record

The National Weather Service says Tulsa set a new record low for January 6 with a bone-chilling reading of -2 degrees Farenheit at Tulsa International Airport.

That breaks a record set all the way back in 1912, when Tulsa was still in its infancy and only five years after Oklahoma was admitted to the Union as the 46th state.

Initially, the NWS issued a statement saying the record low for Monday was -1 degree F., but when KRMG called the office for confirmation they had just updated their readings and saw the lower temperature recorded at 7:26 a.m.

Just north of Tulsa, it was even colder.

Bartlesville recorded a low of -14 degrees F.

That was the actual air temperature recorded at the airport, not a wind chill reading.

Meteorologist in Charge Steve Piltz at the NWS office in Tulsa tells KRMG that the cold was the result of polar circulation that normally stays up by the pole shifted south as far as Canada, pushing temperatures down over a large swath of the United States.

Low temperatures that haven't been seen in many areas for 20-30 years were common, and in some places, like Tulsa, records more than a century old have fallen.

Tulsa will see its first temperatures above freezing Tuesday afternoon.

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