It was even colder in Bettles, Alaska, on Tuesday, where the temperature dropped to minus-41 with a bone-chilling wind chill of minus-53.

Statewide, it was the first time Alaska’s daily temperature index was significantly below normal in almost a year.

This morning, some locations in our 49th state plummeted as low as minus-40 to minus-45 degrees.

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Although the weather in the Last Frontier is cold compared with the past two years, it has been much colder in the past. Alaska’s coldest November temperature of minus-62 was set in 1970 at Prospect Creek.

Through October this year, Alaska was having its warmest year on record.

But it’s cold now and expected to stay cold for at least another week or so. For the first time since February 2014, the National Weather Service predicts much of the state to be colder than normal in its six- to 10-day outlook.

As the cold continues to build over Alaska and western Canada over the next week, some of it will begin to bleed south.

Computer models are unanimous in bringing a significant blast of cold air to the western half of the United States in about six to eight days. On Wednesday afternoon next week, temperatures are forecast to be 20 to 30 degrees colder than normal in much of the Rockies and western Plains.

While the exact numbers are subject to shift, this would mean highs in the teens in Denver and Billings, Mont., and the 20s around Salt Lake City.

Some of this cold air is likely to shift toward the eastern half of the country in eight to 10 days, but models tend to suggest it will lose some of its intensity.