Why this cold snap feels so brutal for many Americans

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Brutally frigid temperatures sweeping across much of the United States have prompted many residents to describe the cold as unusually harsh and long-lasting—even as experts say it is not unprecedented. The Associated Press reported that researchers in weather and behavior attribute much of the emotional and physical intensity to how unfamiliar cold has become for many Americans after a period of unusually mild winters.

A consumer-behavior researcher, Hannah Perfecto of Washington University in St. Louis, drew a comparison meant to explain the “shock” effect. Perfecto wrote in an email that “We adapt, we get used to things. This is why your first bite of dessert is much more satisfying than your 20th bite,” and she added, “The same is true for unpleasant experiences: Day 1 of a cold snap is much more a shock to the system than Day 20 is.” The implication, in Perfecto’s view, is that the longer the cold persists, the more manageable it can become.

The sense that people are reacting to cold they haven’t regularly experienced also showed up in how residents describe the change in their own lifetimes. Charlie Steele, a 78-year-old retired federal worker in Saugerties, New York, said the current January deep-freeze is “much, much colder than anything I can remember,” and he said his earlier winters had included going outside in winter wearing a T-shirt and shorts and even walking barefoot in the snow.

Experts said the perception Steele described aligns with data showing fewer extremely cold days in the recent record. The AP reported that Climate Central data found four fewer days per year, on average, of subfreezing temperatures across the U.S. between 2001 and 2025 than between the prior 25 years. That same analysis, using more than 240 weather stations, found that spells of subfreezing temperatures had become less widespread and had not lasted as long—until the current year. In Albany, about 40 miles from Steele, the change was reportedly even more pronounced, with 11 fewer subfreezing days in the last 25 years than in the previous quarter century.

Steele said the cold’s intensity was also a practical matter of experience. “You’re out of practice,” Steele told the AP. “You’re kind of lulled into complacency.” The AP linked that “practice” gap to broader research on how exposure shapes both expectations and behavior, suggesting that a prolonged spell can still be more survivable than it is initially jarring.

Climate scientists said climate change helps explain why a prolonged cold snap can feel more extreme to younger people. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California’s Water Resources Institute, said it is “quite possible that for anybody under the age of 30, in some spots this may well be the coldest week of their life.” Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, said in an interview described by the AP that “humans get used to all kinds of things — city noise, stifling heat, lies from politicians, and winter cold. So when a ‘normal’ cold spell does come along, we feel it more acutely.”

The AP also pointed to research and meteorological analysis indicating how quickly extreme-cold benchmarks can recede from public memory. The report cited a 2019 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences saying people can forget how extreme cold feels after just two to eight years of milder winters. It further reported that over the past 30 years the average daily low in the continental U.S. has dropped below 10 degrees Fahrenheit 40 times, compared with 124 times in the preceding 30 years, citing meteorologist Ryan Maue, formerly NOAA’s chief scientist. Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, said, “People have forgotten just how cold it was in the 20th century.”

As the cold stretches beyond its initial shock, experts told the AP that adaptation can reduce how intensely people feel the weather. University of San Diego psychiatrist Thomas Rutledge said people shake off what he called their “weather rustiness.” In an email to the AP, Rutledge recalled Alaska and wrote: “I assumed that everyone was a good driver in winter conditions. How couldn’t they be with so much practice?” He added that he had observed a spike in car accidents after the first big snowfall and wrote that it “seemed that the 4-6 months of spring and summer was enough for peoples’ winter driving skills to rust enough to cause accidents.”

The AP reported that the current cold snap has not only tested personal preparedness but also strained infrastructure. Rutledge, as cited by the AP, said that while the dynamics described were familiar in Alaska, the cold has reached southern cities such as Dallas and Miami—places where utilities and other basic infrastructure may be “ill-equipped to handle the extreme weather,” said Francis. The risks described by the AP include slips on ice, power going down and leaving people freezing indoors, and storms limiting visibility and making commuting or basic errands potentially perilous.

Even with the “out of practice” framing, experts said the event still fits within longer historical patterns. The AP reported that data from 400 weather stations across the continental U.S., with at least a century of record-keeping and tracked by the Southeast Regional Climate Center, showed that only 33 stations had recorded enough subzero temperatures (minus 18 degrees Celsius) since the start of 2026 to be in the top 10% of the coldest first 32 days of any year over the past century. For Steele, the current cold has reinforced what he called being rusty: as a younger man, he said he could hunt in winter and sit for hours on cold rocks, but now he told the AP, “I’m rusty. I’m out of practice.”