Kansas town breaks 80-year-old record low. Here’s what’s ahead in Wichita-area forecast

Wichita was three degrees too warm Wednesday morning to tie a record low for Oct. 16. But two other places in Kansas beat or tied a record.

The low temperature in Wichita on Wednesday reached 30 degrees. The Oct. 16 record low is 27 degrees, set in 1966. Records in Wichita date back to 1888.

Kansas has four official sites where records are kept: Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport and the airports in Russell, Salina and Chanute.

Chanute reached a low of 27 on Wednesday morning, surpassing its previous Oct. 16 low of 28 degrees in 1943, according to National Weather Service data. At 24 degrees, Salina tied its Oct. 16 low set in 1966.

The tie in Salina is considered preliminary until an official record is taken later tonight, but it’s expected to hold, according to NWS meteorologist James Cuellar, who is based in Wichita.

If the freeze Wednesday morning seems early in the season, that’s because it is a little earlier than usual. In Wichita, on records from 1991 to 2020, the average first freeze happened around October 25, Cuellar said.

“We are about nine days early, which is decently early, it’s not completely, totally out of the realm of what we would expect,” he said.

Wednesday’s weather was a “powerful cold front from the Northern Plains” in the Midwest, he said. It was the coldest morning area wide since March 27, he said.

It didn’t stay long. It was in the 60s toward the late afternoon.

The forecast the rest of the week is lows in the 50s with highs in the 70s. The normal high this time of year is 71 degrees.

Rain could be possible Friday night and into Saturday morning, but will likely stay west of Wichita, he said. The area could see as much as a quarter-inch of rain Sunday night and into Monday morning, he said.