This town hit -55.7 C — Canada's coldest temperature in 50 years

Even as parts of the United States experience unseasonably warm holidays, some corners of Canada are hitting extremes of cold not seen since the 1970s.

On Dec. 23, a weather monitoring station in Braeburn, Yukon, recorded a temperature reading of -55.7 degrees Celsius, the lowest December temperature charted in Canada since 1975.

For context, this isn’t too far off the average temperature on the surface of Mars, a planet whose lack of atmosphere renders it notably cold and uninhabitable. The air temperature on Mars averages out at -60 C.

It also means Braeburn experienced a depth of cold that has never been known in most of the world’s countries.

That’s particularly true in the Western hemisphere. Even in the most Antarctic, mountainous regions of Argentina, the lowest they’ve ever charted was −32.8 C, recorded in 1907.

In the non-Alaska parts of the United States, the lowest temperature on record is roughly on par with Braeburn’s low: −56.7 C, charted in a Montana mountain pass in 1954.

Braeburn is little more than a roadhouse on the Alaska Highway, best known for its oversized cinnamon buns. But it was at the epicentre of a Yukon cold snap that’s set to continue well into the first days of 2026.

Mayo and the former Klondike Gold Rush centre of Dawson City both spent two consecutive weeks in December with temperatures never rising about -40 C.

It’s this region of Canada that is famously home to the lowest North American temperature ever recorded.

In February 1947, the small community of Snag, Yukon, hit -63 C, plunging it into a surreal netherworld in which exhaled breath immediately turned into powdered ice crystals, and sounds became hyper-amplified.

The Yukon experienced this latest cold snap even as other corners of the winter world experienced historically warm weather.

The Iceland capital of Reykjavík, for instance, charted its warmest Christmas Day ever, with temperatures briefly hitting a summery 19.7 C.

Florida-based meteorologist Jeff Berardelli noted in a social media post that Braeburn hit -55.7 C at the precise time that Dallas, Texas, was topping out at 27.2 C, a continental spread of more than 70 degrees.

Given the size of Canada, it’s notable that the country’s hottest and coldest regions aren’t that far apart.

Braeburn is roughly a day’s drive from Lytton, B.C., the place that in 2021 charted Canada’s highest-ever temperature of 49.6 C.