Extreme cold events dataset across 217 U.S. cities

This dataset contains a curated collection of cold snap events for 217 U.S. cities, developed to support building energy modeling and thermal resilience analysis under extreme cold conditions. Events were identified from 24 years of historical hourly temperature data (2001-2024) obtained from the NASA POWER project using a location-specific percentile-based threshold to detect periods of abnormal cold relative to local climate conditions.

The dataset includes whole-year EnergyPlus Weather (EPW) files corresponding to the years in which the events occurred, along with a summary spreadsheet listing all events and their associated metrics. Users can identify events of interest in the spreadsheet and then use the corresponding EPW file to perform building performance simulations for the specific time period during which the cold snap occurred.