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January 10, 2014 -- Updated 1321 GMT (2121 HKT)
(CNN) -- An escaped jail inmate turned himself in just so that he could warm up -- that's how cold the U.S. has been this week.
With the country swept with unforgiving weather since December due to a distorted polar vortex, Brimson in Minnesota plunged to -40 Celcius (-40 Fahrenheit: this is the point at which the temperature scales meet) on Wednesday while Chicago saw its record low of -27 C (-16.6 F) on Monday.
As dangerously cold as it seems to be, however, it's (fortunately) still a long way from beating the world's lowest temperature record.
"Everybody is interested in extremes -- the hottest, the wettest, the windiest -- so creating a database of professionally verified records is useful in that fact alone," says Randall Cerveny from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
With that in mind, what other extreme weather records are there? Cerveny helped us pick out a few highlights from around the world.
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