What Are the Coldest States in the US?

Alaska is, by far, the coldest state with an average annual temperature of 28.9 degrees Fahrenheit in 2024, well below freezing. The coldest year on record in Alaska was 1956—three years before it became a state—when the average temperature was a frigid 21.8.

The coldest temperature ever recorded in Alaska was 80 below zero in Prospect Creek, a now-defunct mining camp more than 150 miles north of Fairbanks, on January 23, 1971. That’s also the coldest single temperature ever recorded in the United States.

Even places as frozen as Prospect Creek thaw out every spring, and residents of remote Alaskan towns eagerly await the day the ice cracks and rivers begin to flow again. In Nenana, Alaska, correctly guessing the exact timing of the spring thaw can make you rich.

The Nenana Ice Classic has been held in this tiny town every winter since 1917. Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world place $3 bets on the exact day, hour and minute that the Tanana River starts flowing. The winner is determined by an ingenious homemade system involving a floating wooden buoy.

“It’s a huge structure that’s 26 feet tall,” explains Megan Baker, manager of the Nenana Ice Classic, “and we connect it with ropes and wires to two clocks inside a watchman’s shack on the dock. [The buoy] has to move approximately 100 feet downriver in order to pull the rope enough to stop the clocks.”

The winning wager in 2025 was April 27 at 3:56 p.m. Alaska Standard Time, and the jackpot was $211,267. Proceeds from the Nenana Ice Classic help pay for important community services, and the contest provides some welcome excitement during a long, cold winter.

“It’s huge,” says Baker, one of some 350 residents in Nenana. “We have hundreds of people that will sit on the dock and watch the ice melt. No joke.”

North Dakota is a distant second behind Alaska in the race for the coldest state with an average annual temperature of 43.8 degrees Fahrenheit in 2024. But don’t let that low-40s average fool you; North Dakota winters can be brutal. The average winter temperature (December through February) in the Roughrider state was 11 degrees in 2024-25, and some years have dipped into the single digits.

Incredibly, North Dakota’s coldest day ever was recorded in the same year as the state’s hottest day. In 1936, the mercury read minus 60 degrees in the city of Parshall on February 15. Later that year, it registered 121 degrees in Steele, North Dakota, on July 6. That’s a 181-degree swing.

After a long day of ice fishing in January, there’s nothing that warms up the North Dakotan soul like a bowl of knoephla soup. The star of this cream-based chicken soup is fluffy-chewy dumplings, a nod to the recipe’s German roots. North Dakota grandmas have been serving this regional favorite for generations, and that’s how Fargo native Ben Myhre learned how to make it.

“I distinctly remember climbing up on the counter with [my grandma]—I was probably 8—and making the dumplings,” says Myhre, who runs the heritage food blog Ramshackle Pantry. “There are a million [knoephla] recipes [in North Dakota] and a million memories.”

Myhre’s recipe would make grandma proud.

The average temperature in Wyoming was just a fraction of a degree warmer than North Dakota in 2024, but Wyoming can boast that its coldest recorded temperature is still lower. On February 9, 1933, the thermometer at the Riverside Ranger Station in Yellowstone National Park registered minus 66 degrees Fahrenheit.

Casper was the coldest city in Wyoming in 2024, according to NOAA data. However, the city of Sheridan saw a colder average 2024-25 winter temperature at 24.3 degrees.

Wyoming is cowboy country, but when it’s too cold to rodeo, the locals strap on skis and go skijoring. Skijoring is a uniquely Western sport (with roots in Norwegian ski driving): a combination of horseback riding and slalom ski racing with a dash of waterskiing. In a skijoring race, a skier is pulled behind a horse and must complete a slalom course—including jumps—in the fastest time possible.

Skijoring is a team sport, explains Richard Raymer, who helped start the annual Saratoga Skijoring Races in small-town Saratoga, Wyoming, in 2015. There’s the skier, the horse and the rider, and all three need to be in sync to complete the course with a fast time (and without crashing).

The Saratoga Skijoring Races run every February and welcome serious competitors, curious amateurs and even kids. Raymer’s youngest daughter started racing when she was 4 years old.

“[We’re] a horse family. We’re not a ski family,” says Raymer, noting that the closest ski mountain is two-and-a-half hours away. “My youngest daughter… has never skied down a hill. She’s only skied behind a horse.”

The average temperatures in Wyoming and Montana in 2024 were so close—Montana was 0.1 degrees warmer—that it was effectively a tie, but Montana has some serious cold-weather bragging rights. The coldest temperature in the Lower 48 states was recorded on January 20, 1954, near Rogers Pass (about an hour north of Helena). It was minus 70 degrees.

The average temperature in Montana during the 2024-25 winter was 20.4 degrees, which was more than two degrees colder than its rival Wyoming.

There are countless holiday carnivals and winter festivals across the U.S., but the Whitefish Winter Carnival in Whitefish, Montana, must be one of the weirdest and most wonderful. The weeks-long celebration has its own colorful Norse legend, includes a disco party and culminates with the Penguin Plunge, an icy dip into Whitefish Lake in full penguin costumes. The carnival has been running since 1960, and every year the Penguin Plunge raises more than $100,000 for Special Olympics Montana, says Hillary Crowley, the reigning Duchess of Lark.

In 2024, Maine edged out Idaho by 0.3 degrees to make the top five coldest states in the country. The average winter temperature in the Pine Tree State was a chilly 18.3 degrees in 2024-2025, which was markedly colder than both Montana and Wyoming.

The coldest city in Maine in 2024 was Caribou in the northeast corner of the state with an average temperature of 44.7 degrees. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Maine was minus 50 on January 16, 2009, on the Big Black River near the border with Quebec, Canada.

The U.S. National Toboggan Championships are held every February in Camden, Maine. “It’s kind of like sledding for grown ups,” explains Holly Anderson, co-chair of the free event, which celebrates 35 years in 2026. Racers in old-school toboggans reach speeds over 35 miles per hour as they barrel down a 400-foot, ice-filled wooden chute originally built in 1936 (the current chute dates back to 1990).

“There’s a lot of screaming,” says Anderson, who first raced in 1998. “There’s no handles… You’ve got your arms and legs wrapped around two or three people… and [you’re] just sort of balancing on top of a piece of wood going down the hill.” Fear is all part of the experience, but once people see how much fun it is, they’re hooked. “We have a lot of spectators that end up becoming racers,” she says.