National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

Prolonged Heavy Rain and Heavy Snowfall Event Continues for Northern California into the Northern Rockies

A prolonged atmospheric river event will continue to bring moderate to heavy rain with a risk for flooding to northern into central California with heavy mountain snow in the Sierras, southern Cascades, and northern Rockies through midweek. High winds may bring power outages and make for difficult travel across northern Nevada and the central Rockies. Read More >

Below is a listing of the climate records on New Year's Day for Rapid City, Gillette, Lead, Winner, Lemmon, Sundance, Spearfish, Newcastle, Hot Springs, and Custer. Record high temperatures have reached the 50s to mid-60s. Of these sites, Lemmon has been the coldest, dipping down to -31 degrees in 1928. In 1970, Lead had a whopping 35 inches of snow on the ground.

Also listed is the weather data for the past ten New Year's Days in Rapid City and Gillette. Very little snow has fallen on January 1st for the past decade, though minor accumulations of snow occurred in 2022 and 2023. Temperatures on New Year's Day in 2022 were very chilly, with highs in the single digits to teens and lows below zero. Last year, we experienced a relatively mild and dry January 1st.