Just how cold was it?

About the only fun thing to do outside at Alaska's Jim River Maintenance Camp when the temperature is 79 degrees below zero is hope it gets two degrees colder. That would break the record low temperature for the United States, 80 degrees below zero.

And for a few hours on Jan. 31, it looked like that would happen.

Until the battery that powers the monitoring device died.

The National Weather Service says that isn't the only problem. The private station is not up to NWS standards.

But NWS' very own measures showed some breathtakingly low temperatures:

In Circle Hot Springs, Alaska, the low was minus 58 degrees, breaking the 1914 record of minus 52. Another low-lying station recorded a low temperature of minus 62.

So some weather bloggers believe the minus 79 degree reading was plausible, and it might have been lower -- cold comfort for the station that would have set a new record.

But still far shy of the coldest recorded temperature on Earth: 126.8 degrees below zero at a Soviet research station in Antarctica in 1983.

There are some records you just don't want to break.