Why this US cold snap feels bone-shattering when its not record-shattering

The brutally frigid weather that has gripped most of America for the past 11 days is not unprecedented. It just feels that way.

The first quarter of the 21st century was unusually warm by historical standards – mostly due to human-induced climate change – and so a prolonged cold spell this winter is unfamiliar to many people, especially younger Americans.

Because bone-shattering cold occurs less frequently, Americans are experiencing it more intensely now than they did in the past, several experts in weather and behavior said. But the longer the current icy blast lasts – sub-freezing temperatures are forecast to stick around in many places — the easier it should become to tolerate.

“We adapt, we get used to things. This is why your first bite of dessert is much more satisfying than your 20th bite,” Hannah Perfecto, who studies consumer behavior at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote in an email. “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.”

Charlie Steele, a 78-year-old retired federal worker in Saugerties, New York, considers himself a lover of cold weather. In the recent past, he has gone outside in winter wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and has even walked barefoot in the snow. But this January's deep-freeze is “much, much colder than anything I can remember," he said.

Steele's sense of change is backed up data.

There have been four fewer days of subfreezing temperatures in the U.S. per year, on average, between 2001 and 2025 than there were in the previous 25 years, according to data from Climate Central. The data from more than 240 weather stations also found that spells of subfreezing temperatures have become less widespread geographically and haven’t lasted as long — until this year.

In Albany, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) from Steele, the change has been more pronounced than the national average, with 11 fewer subfreezing days in the last 25 years than the previous quarter century.

“You're out of practice,” Steele said. “You're kind of lulled into complacency.”

Climate change has shifted what people are used to, said several climate scientists, including Daniel Swain of the University of California's Water Resources Institute.

“It’s quite possible that for anybody under the age of 30, in some spots this may well be the coldest week of their life,” Swain said.

Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, said, “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.”

People forget how extreme cold feels after just two to eight years of milder winters, according to a 2019 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Americans have gone through a much longer stretch than that.

Over the past 30 years, the average daily low in the continental U.S. has dropped below 10 degrees (minus 12 degrees Celsius) 40 times, according to meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But in the preceding 30 years, that chilly threshold was reached 124 times.

“People have forgotten just how cold it was in the 20th century,” Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler said.

Their wake-up call came late last month, when the country's average daily low dipped below 10 degrees three times in one week.

Regardless of how it feels, extremely cold weather presents dangers. People and vehicles slip on ice, power can go down, leaving people freezing in homes, and storms limit visibility, making commuting to work or even doing basic errands, potentially perilous. More than 110 deaths have been connected to the winter storms and freezing temperatures since January.

As this winter's frigid days stretch on, people adapt. University of San Diego psychiatrist Thomas Rutledge said people shake off what he calls their “weather rustiness.”

Rutledge explained what he meant via email, recalling the period decades ago when he lived in Alaska. “I assumed that everyone was a good driver in winter conditions. How couldn’t they be with so much practice?" he wrote. "But what I annually observed was that there was always a large spike in car accidents in Alaska after (the) first big snowfall hit. Rather than persistent skills, it seemed that the 4-6 months of spring and summer was enough for peoples’ winter driving skills to rust enough to cause accidents.”

That's Alaska. This cold snap hit southern cities such as Dallas and Miami, where it's not just the people unaccustomed to the cold. Utilities and other basic infrastructure are also ill-equipped to handle the extreme weather, said Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

While this ongoing cold snap may feel unusually long to many Americans, it isn't, according to data from 400 weather stations across the continental U.S. with at least a century of record-keeping, as tracked by the Southeast Regional Climate Center.

Only 33 of these weather stations have 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.

When Steele moved to the Hudson Valley as a toddler in 1949, the average daily low temperature over the previous 10 winters was 14.6 degrees (minus 9.7 degrees Celsius). In the past 10 years, the average daily low was 20.8 degrees (minus 6.2 degrees Celsius).

As a younger man, Steele used to hunt in winter and sit for hours on cold rocks.

“I could never do that now,” he said. “I’m rusty. I’m out of practice.”

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FILE - A pedestrian crosses the street near Radio City Music Hall during a winter storm Jan. 25, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa, File)

FILE - Vehicles travel eastbound on Interstate 20 near a sign advising motorists of icy conditions during a winter storm Jan. 24, 2026, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

FILE - A person carries grocery bags up a residential street during a winter storm Jan. 25, 2026, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel, File)

FILE - Rafael Tavares digs his car, which was encased about 20 inches of snow, during a winter storm Jan. 26, 2026, in Lawrence, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

FILE - Pedestrians walk down Fifth Avenue during a winter storm Jan. 25, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa, File)

FILE - Carrie Hampton tries to navigate a snowy intersection without spilling her coffee in New York, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

LONDON (AP) — British police Tuesday opened a criminal investigation into politician Peter Mandelson over alleged misconduct related to his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

The British government says newly released Epstein files include documents that suggest Mandelson may have shared market-sensitive information with the convicted sex offender while Mandelson was a member of the British government a decade and a half ago.

The Metropolitan Police force said detectives had reviewed reports of misconduct and decided they met the threshold for a full investigation.

Misconduct in public office carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. But opening an investigation does not mean Mandelson will be arrested, charged or convicted.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

LONDON (AP) — British politician Peter Mandelson is quitting the House of Lords as he faces new questions, and a potential police investigation, over his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Speaker of the Lords, Michael Forsyth, said Mandelson has informed officials he will retire from Parliament’s upper chamber effective Wednesday.

The announcement came as the British government prepared legislation to eject Mandelson from the Lords and remove the noble title, Lord Mandelson, that came with his seat in the chamber. Mandelson will retain the title after he retires unless lawmakers pass legislation to strip it from him — something that has not been done for more than a century.

The government also said it had sent a file of material to police who are looking into allegations that Mandelson passed sensitive government information to the disgraced financier.

A trove of more than 3 million pages of Epstein-related documents released by the U.S. Justice Department has brought excruciating revelations about 72-year-old Mandelson, who served in senior government roles under previous Labour governments and was U.K. ambassador to Washington until Prime Minister Keir Starmer fired him in September over his ties to Epstein.

The newly released files contain emails from Mandelson to Epstein passing on nuggets of political information, some of which critics say may have broken the law. Police say they are reviewing reports of misconduct “to determine if they meet the criminal threshold for investigation.”

Starmer told his Cabinet on Tuesday that he was “appalled” by the revelations in newly released Epstein files, and was concerned there are more details still to emerge. He has ordered the civil service to conduct an “urgent” review of all of Mandelson’s contacts with Epstein while he was in government.

Starmer spokesman Tom Wells said that the government had sent police its assessment that the Mandelson-Epstein documents contained “likely market-sensitive information" about the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath that shouldn't have been shared outside of government.

Among the revelations in the files:

— In 2003-2004, bank documents suggest Epstein sent three payments totaling $75,000 to accounts linked to Mandelson or his partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva. Mandelson has said that he doesn't remember receiving the money and will investigate whether the documents are authentic. But he resigned from the governing Labour Party on Sunday, saying he didn’t want to cause the party “further embarrassment.”

In 2008, Epstein avoided federal prosecution by pleading guilty to state charges in Florida of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

Emails and text messages show that Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein continued after the financier’s sentence.

— In 2009, Epstein sent da Silva 10,000 pounds (about $13,650 at today’s rates) to pay for an osteopathy course. Mandelson told The Times of London that “in retrospect, it was clearly a lapse in our collective judgment for Reinaldo to accept this offer.”

— Also in 2009, Mandelson, then business secretary in the U.K. government, appears to have told Epstein he would lobby other members of the government to reduce a tax on bankers’ bonuses.

— The same year, Mandelson sent Epstein an internal government report discussing ways the U.K. could raise money after the 2008 global financial crisis, including by selling off government assets. Mandelson wrote: “Interesting note that’s gone to the PM.”

— In May 2010, Mandelson messaged Epstein that “sources tell me 500 b euro bailout” is almost complete. The message was dated hours before day European governments announced a 500 billion euro deal to shore up the single currency.

Epstein died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019, while awaiting trial on U.S. federal charges accusing him of sexually abusing dozens of girls.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said that Mandelson's friendship with Epstein was “a betrayal on so many levels.”

“It is a betrayal of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein that he continued that association and that friendship for so long after his conviction,” Streeting told the BBC. “It is a betrayal of not just one but two prime ministers” — Gordon Brown, the U.K. leader between 2007 and 2010, and Starmer.

An email requesting comment on the documents was sent to Mandelson through the House of Lords.

FILE - President Donald Trump, left, gets a reaction from Britian's ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson, right, as they take questions from members of the media after announcing a trade deal between U.S. and U.K. in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, May 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, file)

FILE - British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, right, talks with Britain's ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson during a welcome reception at the ambassador's residence on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025 in Washington. (Carl Court/Pool Photo via AP, file)

FILE - Britain's Ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, speaks during a reception at the ambassador's residence on Feb. 26, 2025 in Washington. (Carl Court/Pool Photo via AP, File)

British Ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson speaks during the rededication ceremony of the George Washington Statue in the National Gallery in London, Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)