Doyle Rice

USA TODAY

Following the warmest year ever recorded in the USA's northernmost state, a recent bout of hideous cold in Alaska is a bit of a shock to the system.

"I want to leave," Cynthia Erickson of Tanana, Alaska, told the Associated Press. "My teeth are frozen to my lips."

In Tanana, the temperature dropped to 54 below zero on Wednesday, the coldest spot in the state.

"It's just miserable," Erickson added. "I hate everybody who lives in a warm place."

Fairbanks dropped to 50 below zero for the first time in five years Wednesday, Anchorage climatologist Brian Brettschnider said, triggering spooky ice fog across the city. Ice fog occurs when tiny ice particles are suspended in the air when temperatures fall lower than about 22 degrees below zero.

It was so cold that schoolkids in Fairbanks this week were forced indoors for recess, he said. When the temperature is colder than 20 degrees below zero in Fairbanks, outdoor recess is canceled, according to the local school district.

And when it dropped to 40 below in Fairbanks, a meteorologist quipped "Celsius or Fahrenheit?," knowing that it didn't matter: That's the one temperature that's the same on both scales.

The National Weather Service in Fairbanks reported temperatures "warmed" Thursday to 38 below zero. Still, that level of extreme cold can ground planes, freeze pipes and prevent cars from starting.

Farther south, the 1-below-zero reading in Anchorage on Wednesday made it the coldest day there since January 2012.

The icy chill is the result of an upper-level low pressure system containing a lot of cold air that is locked into place over western Alaska, Brettschneider told Alaska's Energy Desk.

“We’re kind of under the bulls-eye,” he said in an interview. “So if you go over to Canada, the lower 48, even Southeast Alaska, they’re on the warm side of this upper-level low pressure, so as far as they’re concerned, they’re asking why's it so warm, while we’re over here to the west asking why’s it so cold,” Brettschneider said.

As bad as it's been, it can be get colder. The USA's all-time record low temperature of 79.9 degrees below zero was set in Prospect Creek, Alaska, on Jan. 23, 1971.