If you tried to escape the brutally frigid temperatures that invaded New Jersey Sunday morning, there was nowhere to go. Every corner of the Garden State, from the wooded hills of Sussex County down to the flat terrain of Cape May County, got slammed with single-digit readings, and many thermometers plummeted below zero.

How bad was it? Well, you were lucky if you weren't stuck in the hills and valleys of Sussex County. In Walpack, the mercury dropped to a bone-chilling 16 degrees below zero, according to climate data from the New Jersey Weather & Climate Network, based at Rutgers University.

In Andover, also in Sussex County, the mercury dipped to 8 below zero, the National Weather Service reported. Keep in mind, that was the actual air temperature -- not the wind-chill reading.

And Sussex was not alone when it came to shivering-cold temperature readings Sunday morning. Hopewell in Mercer County reported in at 13 degrees below zero, Basking Ridge in Somerset County hit 10 below, and several climate stations in Cape May, Monmouth and Warren counties plunged to 9 below zero.

Although this was not the coldest it's ever been in New Jersey -- that distinction belongs to River Vale in Bergen County, where a temperature reading of 34 below zero was recorded on Jan. 5, 1904 -- some daily record lows for Jan. 7 were broken today.

Among the places that set new records were Atlantic City International Airport, New Brunswick and Trenton.

Mathieu Gerbush, the assistant New Jersey State Climatologist at Rutgers, said many of the coldest places on Sunday were low-lying areas, where cold air settled in overnight because it was a calm, clear night. In other places with frigid temperatures, Gerbush noted, the snow cover from Thursday's blizzard enhanced the radiative cooling that occurred overnight.

Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @LensReality or like him on Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook.