Lowest temperature recorded in France

What to remember

On 17 January 1985, the thermometer in Mouthe, in the Doubs department, fell to 41.2 °C below zero. No other official reading in France has gone that low, and the cold spell is what made the town known far beyond the Jura.

Mouthe is a mid-mountain commune near the Swiss border, in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of eastern France, and part of the Haut-Jura regional nature park. It lies between 926 and 1,414 m above sea level, 25 km southwest of Pontarlier as the crow flies, with 1,022 inhabitants in 2023.

Winter there is also about sport: the village is a small resort with a few downhill runs and many cross-country trails, and it hosts the finish of the Transjurassienne race whenever there is enough snow. Weather records of this kind are compiled by national weather services, and only officially observed values count, since colder spells may have gone unmeasured before modern instruments or far from any official station.