Commentary: The weather has begun asking difficult questions of your coat.
Latest reading6.0°C17:00 local · 1 h 11 min agoReports about once an hour · 23 readings in the last 24 hours.Source: NOAA METARToday so far9.0°/6.0°High at 12:00 local · low at 08:00 localRange 3.0°C · from 10 observationsSource: NOAA METAR and SYNOPHighest we have recorded24.0°CWe recorded this on 26 September 2026. It is the highest reading this site has taken here.Source: Our own observations, 47 daysLowest we have recorded−3.0°CWe recorded this on 21 October 2026. It is the lowest reading this site has taken here.Source: Our own observations, 47 days
The highest this site has recorded here. Source: Our own observations, 47 days.
Lowest we have recorded
−3.0°C
Date
Wednesday, 21 October 2026
Time of day
04:00 local
Location
Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt, China
Position
36.51°N 103.62°E · 1939 m
The lowest this site has recorded here. Source: Our own observations, 47 days.
Recent readings
Each reading as it arrived, newest first, with what our quality checks did with it. A reading we did not count is shown struck through with the reason.
The most recent readings from Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt, newest first, with the change from the reading before it and whether it was counted.
Time
Temp
Change
Status
6.0°C
−1.0°C
Counted
7.0°C
−1.0°C
Counted
8.0°C
0.0°C
Counted
8.0°C
0.0°C
Counted
Recent temperature history
The same record at three widths, picking up where the last 24 hours above leaves off. Each period is summarised from the grain that suits it, so nothing here is one reading repeated thousands of times into the page.
The nearest other station is 211.4 km away. Quality control compares a reading against stations within 150 km, so there is nothing close enough to cross-check this one against.
Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt (ZLLL) is a METAR weather station in China, 1,939 m above sea level, about 49 km from Baiyin.
We have kept a daily record here since 22 September 2026, every one of the 47 days this site has existed. We have stored 1,073 observations across the 46 of those days for which we also recorded a count.
In summary
Over the last week we have readings for 7 days here, running from −3.0°C to 17.0°C, a spread of 20.0°C.
It reports about once an hour, and sent 23 readings in the last 24 hours.
Its best placing today was 869th coldest of the 5,267 stations reporting.
What stands out here
Its widest single day so far swung 20.0°C between low and high.
At 1,939 m, this is the 2nd highest of the 52 stations we track in China.
It has dropped below freezing on 6 of the 7 days we have recorded here.
Recent highlights
Fell to −3.0°C, the lowest we have recorded here, beating 1.0°C on Fri 9 Oct 2026.
Entered the hundred coldest reporting stations on Earth, reaching 69th of 5,276.
Its low of 4.0°C was the lowest of the 47 stations we hold in China.
Highest and lowest we have recorded here
Highest
24.0°C
Sat 26 Sep 2026 at 16:00 local
Lowest
−3.0°C
Fri 6 Nov 2026 at 08:00 local
These are not official records. They are the highest and lowest readings this site has stored for Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt since September 2026, across 47 days we hold a reading for. Official climatological records are adjudicated by national meteorological services and by the WMO.
By month, from our own record
Monthly highest, lowest and mean temperature recorded at Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt by this site.
Month
High
Low
Mean
Days
Readings
November 2026
17.0°C
−3.0°C
5.5°C
7
154
October 2026
23.0°C
−3.0°C
8.2°C
31
728
September 2026
24.0°C
2.0°C
13.6°C
8 of 9
191
Means are of the readings we stored, weighted by how often this station reported, so they are not daily averages and not climate normals. Some days were recorded before we began counting observations and contribute their high and low but not the mean.
By year, from our own record
2026
Highest 24.0°C, lowest −3.0°C, mean 8.7°C. 47 days recorded from 1,073 readings.
Recent days
A reading on every one of the last 30 days. Typically 24 readings a day.
Daily highest and lowest air temperature at Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt, most recent first.
This station lies about 4,100 km north of the equator.
Where Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt is
z6
36.51°N 103.62°E
Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt
Ground · satellite
Land surface temperature for 2026-11-06, from NASA GIBS. This is the temperature of the ground seen from orbit, not the air, and it is never ranked against air readings. Cloud hides the ground, so gaps are unread rather than guessed.
What is the highest temperature ever recorded in Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt?
24.0°C (75.2°F) on Saturday, 26 September 2026. That is the highest this site has recorded at this station. It is not an officially certified record unless a meteorological authority has recognised it.
Our own observations
What is the lowest temperature ever recorded in Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt?
−3.0°C (26.6°F) on Wednesday, 21 October 2026. That is the lowest this site has recorded at this station.
Our own observations
What is the temperature in Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt right now?
6.0°C (42.8°F), measured at 17:00 local on Saturday 7 November.
Live reading from the station, after our quality checks
Is Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt the coldest place on Earth?
Not right now: it is 3,196th of the 8,970 stations reporting to us. Its best position since we started watching is 69th of 8,859. We rank the stations that report to us, which is not the same as every place on Earth.
Our live rankings
Where does Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt rank among the coldest places in China?
Right now it is 9th coldest of the 47 stations we track in China.
Our live rankings
Data sources for this page
Readings here arrive through NOAA METAR. METAR is the routine aerodrome weather report, issued for aviation, typically every 30 or 60 minutes and more often when conditions change. It updates far more frequently than a synoptic report, which is why these pages have a usable chart.
Where each figure on this page comes from.
Figure
Source
Type
Latest reading, today so far
NOAA Aviation Weather Center (METAR) and NOAA NWS WMO bulletins (SYNOP)
Measured, station
Nearby stations and distances
Computed from station positions in our own database
Calculated
Download these readings
Every reading we hold for Lanzhou/Zhongchuan Arpt that passed the checks above, as a file. The source networks are public domain and the file carries its own attribution.
Every reading on this page has passed the checks below. A reading that fails any of them is stored as refused and can never be ranked, shown as a record, or counted in a daily high or low.
No reading from this station has been refused in the last 14 days.
01
Has a real position
A reading with no usable latitude and longitude is discarded. It cannot be ranked, mapped, or compared with its neighbours, and a temperature with no place is not an answer to which place is hottest.
02
Position is not a placeholder
Some feeds fill an unknown position with a stand-in value such as 99.99 degrees or an elevation of 9999 m. Those are not coordinates. They are caught separately from a missing position because a station placed at a fake point has no neighbours, so the neighbour check below can never see anything wrong with it.
03
The bulletin itself is current
SYNOP arrives as files that are only re-read when they change. A file that has stopped being updated is set aside whole, before any reading inside it is considered.
04
The reading is recent enough for its network
Different networks get different windows, because they report at different rates: 2 hours for METAR, which transmits continuously, and 9 hours for SYNOP, which reports at 00, 06, 12 and 18 UTC. A single rule would have discarded the entire synoptic network, including every station in Antarctica.
05
Inside the range of measured temperature
☀️ How 6.0°C compares
A typical November afternoon in Ottawa.
Ottawa, Canada, typically reaches 6.1°C in November, averaged over every November day its archive holds. Not a published climate normal: it is the mean of what we hold.
Colder right now than 162 of the 187 capital cities we can read.
It is colder here than in Vienna (7.0°C), London (7.0°C) and Zagreb (7.0°C) at this moment. Those are the coldest capitals still warmer than here, so every other one on the list is further behind.
Observations stored by HottestAndColdest. A day we were not yet tracking is shown as an empty square, and says nothing about whether the station reported.
Anything above 56.8 °C or below -95 °C is refused. The ceiling sits just above the highest reading WMO accepts, so a genuine new world record would be refused here too: a record needs adjudicating, not a live tile on a home page. The floor is deliberately further from its record, because the Antarctic plateau is thinly instrumented and a real extreme there has far less around it to corroborate it.
06
Not a jump too large to be weather
A change of more than 15 °C from this station's previous reading within 60 minutes is treated as a failing sensor. The limit is set from measured data: real weather reaches about 12 °C in an hour at desert sunrise or under a thunderstorm outflow, and the faults found were 20 °C and more.
07
Agrees with the stations around it
A reading more than 12 °C from the median of other stations within 150 km is refused. It needs at least 3 neighbours to run at all, so it protects dense networks and can say nothing about an isolated station, which is why the other checks above have to stand on their own.