Rime forms atop ice alongside a Saranac Lake Riverwalk retaining wall on Friday. (Enterprise photo — Jesse Adcock)

SARANAC LAKE — With two record-breaking low temperatures this week, it’s been a frigid holiday in the Adirondack Park.

On Thanksgiving night, Nov. 22, the National Weather Service’s sensor at the Adirondack Regional Airport in Lake Clear marked a record-low of 21 degrees below zero. The coldest 22nd on record, set in 1932, was minus 11 degrees.

“It pretty much destroyed the record,” said Matthew Clay, a NWS meteorologist based out of Burlington.

Wednesday night, recorded at 4 degrees below zero, also broke the record for the coldest Nov. 21. The previous record holder, Nov. 21, 2000, was minus 2 degrees.

“Every winter we have a cold snap. Last year it happened in January,” Clay said.

Clay said every winter there’s a cold air mass that is trapped up near the poles. It will push south at some point in the winter, sometimes January, sometimes March. And not always to the same location either, as he said the arctic air can settle over the Midwest or even Alaska. It just broke south earlier this year — and here, but that it is not indicative of any wider trend.

Clay said projections show the rest of November as slightly below average for this time of year, but nothing as continuously cold as this week.

Notable lows on Thanksgiving night according to the NWS were: minus 20 degrees in Bloomingdale, minus 17 in Ray Brook, minus 11 in Tupper Lake, and minus 5 in Lake Placid.