When It Officially Hit 120 Degrees In Gann Valley, South Dakota

If you've lived in the great state of South Dakota for any length of time you may have heard this famous phrase:

'Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes, it'll change'.

Yep, in good 'ol South Dakota we have a...uh...variety of weather conditions. It can get downright plum chilly in the winter. And in the summer? Well, you could well be sweating while you're avoiding the pesky orange barrel's that seem to pop up around (and on) the roadways.

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So how hot is 'hot'?

Well, I can recall back some years ago (OK, more than some years) living in Winner, down there in the south-central part of our state, and in July it would get hot as blazes. Now, how hot is 'hot as blazes'? Warm enough that your brew would sweat as much as you did.

The bottom line is, 90s are not uncommon in our state. But where is it the hottest? Well, that of course depends on the day, but the hottest ever recorded was in Buffalo County.

Gann Valley officially topped out at 120 degrees on July 5th, 1936. Now of course that steaming day was smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression, so it didn't matter if there was no air-conditioning back in the 'old days' because even if there was no one would be able to afford it anyway.

But one more little weather nugget.

Surprisingly, the coldest temperature ever recorded in South Dakota came that very same year! Yep, about 5 months earlier on February 17, 1936, it was officially 58 below zero in McIntosh.

Well, I suppose if you split the difference between those 2 days, it was pretty nice.