Moving on is never easy, especially when that moving on involves packing up everything you’ve ever owned and settling down elsewhere. Apartment hunting may not be the most stressful thing you’ll ever do, but it’s definitely up there. Not only will you have to live with your decision for the duration of your lease, your apartment is where you’ll be spending the majority of your time, even if it is just sleeping. Whether you graduated, got a job cross-country, or just needed a change of pace, making an apartment hunting map with BatchGeo can make the best of this process, and make your moving experience much less daunting.

View N.Y.C. Apartment Hunting in a full screen map

Your new digs need more than just certain amenities. They also need to be close to the places you frequent the most. Sure, it can be great when that apartment in your price range has a washer and dryer in unit, but if it’s a 45-minute drive to work or 30 minutes to the only grocery store that carries those brownies you like, you might start regretting your decision.

We’re here to make sure that never happens. Learning how to make a map of your apartment options and the nearby conveniences you need can save you a lot of time, money, and regrets three months after the move when you’re spending more time commuting than in your own apartment.

Create an Apartment Options Spreadsheet — With Some Important Additions

The first step towards creating your apartment options spreadsheet is to identify your apartment’s distance needs. For instance, do you need your apartment to be within a 15-minute walk to work because you get grumpy in the mornings with a long commute in the car? Is there a specific location, such as your favorite grocery store that would be convenient to have nearby? What about that little coffee shop you go to on your days off? Start out by identifying these distance needs, and then input your two or three most frequented places into an Excel or Google spreadsheet.

When putting your two or three most frequented locations in your spreadsheet, be sure to include columns for the name of the place, the address, and the type of place it is. The type will be useful when sorting your map later. Your spreadsheet should look something like this:

Add Your Apartment Options to Your Spreadsheet

After you’ve added in all of your important locations to your spreadsheet, you can start adding in your apartment options. Here is where you can include details about the apartment itself, including rent price, how many bedrooms it has, or if it’s a studio, and whether or not pets are allowed.

Be sure to assign a type to your apartments just like you did with your important locations. Something like “Apartment Option” will allow you to easily sort out your apartment options from your frequently attended locations later on in the map. When you’ve successfully added in all of the apartments you’re considering, your spreadsheet will look something like this:

Now, just simply copy and paste your data into BatchGeo.

Map It & Group By Type

Once you’ve copied and pasted your apartment data into BatchGeo, click on Map Now to easily map your data. From there, be sure to group your data by “Type.”

This way, you can easily sort your data once your map is complete. Next, just click on Make Map to map your data. Your map will look something like this:

View N.Y.C. Apartment Hunting in a full screen map

Visually, you can see the distances between your apartment options in one color, and your most frequented places in the other colors. We added a park and a gym for good measure.

Location, Location, Location: How to Measure Distance

What’s more, though is that you can do more than just eyeball how close your favorite apartment option is to your work. With BatchGeo, you can actually calculate distances between two addresses or points.

In order to do so, when you’re mapping your data, simply:

Click Validate and Set Options and click on Advanced Options. Then, check the option to calculate distance from the first address and select the units. We picked miles. Click Make Map. Our first address was work, and so BatchGeo will automatically calculate just how far every other item on the spreadsheet is from our work. When your spreadsheet is comprised of ten different apartment possibilities, this can be incredibly useful to get a sense of just how far you’ll be walking or driving every weekday.

More Measurement Options

There is one more way BatchGeo can help to make your moving process go as smooth as possible, and it’s related to, you guessed it, location once again. In the event that you don’t want to only know the distance of everything on your map to your work, BatchGeo also gives you the opportunity to measure on the fly. Simply click on the little ruler in the top left corner of your map:

And select the measuring tool. From here, you can draw a line to each point and BatchGeo will let you know how far they are apart. To change the unit of measurement, click the scale on the bottom right of your map. This feature is only available in BatchGeo’s Advanced Mode, which can add even more insights to your map. Advanced Mode is only available if you are a BatchGeo Pro member.

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Before you make your apartment decision based on how much you just want this to be over with, take five minutes to make apartment hunting easier and map it out! And, if you’re done with living in apartments and are in the market to buy a home, check out how to make an open house map.

Over 250,000 active users have created more than 10 million BatchGeo maps! We’re delighted to help so many people visualize their location data.

As you might imagine, providing maps at that scale is expensive. For 10 years, we’ve supported our service with the fast and flexible BatchGeo Pro. Our customers, heavy map users who value additional speed and features, have enabled us to continue to offer a generous free plan.

Recently Google caused some concerns when it announced new pricing for its map service, which BatchGeo is built upon. Previously, we’ve used the free version of Google Maps for our own free maps. Due to the changes, we need to find a new approach for the most popular free maps.

We need to make sure we can cover the additional costs. Currently we are proactively reaching out to free users with extremely high usage to upgrade to a paid plan. We hope the value we’ve provided over the years is worth a small subscription fee.

At the same time, the team is working on a way to view your usage, so you know whether you’ll need to upgrade. At this point, action is only required if you’ve heard from us.

Questions about BatchGeo Pricing

Is BatchGeo still free?

Yes, you can create basic maps on BatchGeo for no charge. Due to changes in Google’s pricing, we’ve had to limit users with significant usage of our free maps.

What happens if I don’t subscribe to BatchGeo?

If you received an email from us, your usage may become limited without subscribing to BatchGeo. We may restrict new maps and your current maps may not be viewable.

You can find out more about BatchGeo Pro here.

If you have questions not answered above, email us and we’ll get back to you.

We mapped the one hundred hottest and coldest extreme temperatures by state. That’s 50 scorchingly high temperatures that will make your face sweat just thinking about them and 50 goosebump-inducingly low temperatures that will have you shivering in your seat.

View Extreme Temperatures Map in a full screen map

Do you think your city has the bragging rights when it comes to extremely hot or cold weather in your state? Check out the map above to see if your city makes the cut, or read on for the extremes of the extremes, same state differences, and other insights into the highest and lowest temperature per state.

Is It Hot In Here, Or Is It Just Me: the Five Hottest Temperatures Ever Recorded

Although we mapped over 100 of the most extreme temperatures the United States has ever seen, there are still the extremes of the extremes. Below is a list of the top five hottest temperatures ever recorded in the U.S. Feel free to crack your morning eggs on the sidewalk and watch as they fry in these five sizzling cities:

1. Furnace Creek, California 134 °F
2. Lake Havasu City, Arizona 128 °F
3. Laughlin, Nevada 125 °F
4. Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, New Mexico 122 °F
5. Steele, North Dakota 121 °F

The five hottest temperatures ever recorded in the United States all come in at over 120 °F. The number one hottest temperature occurred in Furnace Creek, California when the city reached a scorching 134 °F (57 °C) way back on July 10th, 1913. In fact, all of the top five hottest temperatures occurred during the 20th century. The number two slot for hottest temperature in the U.S. goes to Lake Havasu City in Arizona. Lake Havasu City residents sure did sweat on June 29th, 1994 when the temperature reached a high of 128 °F (53 °C). On that same day, in the same year, Laughlin, Nevada also broke records with a temperature measuring in at 125 °F (52 °C.) June 1994 can be classified as a record-breaking month, as just two days prior to Lake Havasu City and Laughlin’s heatwaves, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico reached 122 °F. The last of the top five hottest temperatures was July 6, 1936, when Steele, North Dakota’s temperatures soared to 121 °F.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside: the Five Coldest Temperatures Ever Recorded

While all of the extremely low temperatures we mapped are enough to make you want to bundle up, the five extremes of the extremes range from -61 °F to -80 °F, enough to make throw your cares about the electric bill out the window and crank the heater.

1. Prospect Creek, Alaska -80 °F
2. Lincoln, Montana -70 °F
3. Peter Sinks, Utah -69 °F
4. Moran, Wyoming -63 °F
5. Maybell, Colorado -61 °F

The coldest temperature ever recorded in the United States occurred in Prospect Creek, Alaska. On January 23, 1971, Prospect Creek hit a record-breaking low of -80 °F (-62 °C). Prospect Creek’s record-breaking extreme temperature is at least 10 degrees colder than the rest of the top five most extreme low temperatures on our list. On January 20, 1954, in Lincoln, Montana the temperature dropped to -70 °F. The third and the fifth coldest temperature on our list both occurred on the same day, in the same year. On February 1st, 1985, both Peter Sinks, Utah and Maybell, Colorado blew the records out of the water with freezing temperatures in the -60s. Peter Sinks, Utah hit -69 °F on this monumental day, and Maybell, Colorado came in at freezing -61 °F. In between the two February 1sters sits Moran, Wyoming, whose extreme cold temperature also took place in February. On February 9, 1933 residents and visitors of Moran had to endure temperatures hitting a low of -63 °F.

East or West, Which Coast is Most Extreme?

Because we mapped the data, we can more easily see trends we may not have seen otherwise. For example, when looking at the map, we can see that one side of the country stands out as home to the most extreme of the extreme temperatures.

By sorting the map by the Extreme Temperature (°F) type and only selecting the most extreme ranges on the map, “134-116” for highs and both “-69 – -80” and “-50 – -63” for lows, the map shows us that the West Coast is home to the most extreme temps.

The 10 cities that make up the top 10 most extreme temperatures are mostly located in the Mountain States of the West. Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming all constitute the western geographical region in the U.S. known as the Mountain States. These states are also home to seven of the top 10 cities with the most extreme temperatures ever recorded.

The Mountain States are home to the highest mountain peaks in the United States, the Rocky Mountains, hence the reason for the name Mountain States. In addition to mountains, the Mountain States are also home to all of the major deserts in North America. The Mountain States’ geographical makeup combined with the fact that the eight mountain states (Idaho is the eighth not represented on our top 10 extreme temperatures list) have the highest mean elevation of all 50 U.S. states may be why they are home to seven out of 10 of the most extreme temperatures.

The three other states with cities that make up the top 10 most extreme temperatures are Alaska, California, and North Dakota. Funnily enough, those three states combined with the Mountain States make up the entirety of the West. The West is home to the all of the top 10 most extreme temperatures.

Largest Statewide Differences in Temperature

If you thought a state with a sweltering high temperature in the 100’s wouldn’t be able to sink below parka-wearing temperatures, you would be wrong. In fact, all of the eight cities in the four states below have seen temperature differences of over 180 degrees.

City	State	Extreme Temperature (°F)	Type	Date	Difference
Fort Yukon	Alaska	100	High	June 27, 1915	180
Prospect Creek	Alaska	-80	Low	January 23, 1971	180
Steele	North Dakota	121	High	July 6, 1936	181
Parshall	North Dakota	-60	Low	February 15, 1936	181
Saint George	Utah	117	High	July 5, 1985	186
Peter Sinks	Utah	-69	Low	February 1, 1985	186
Medicine Lake	Montana	117	High	July 5, 1937	187
Lincoln	Montana	-70	Low	January 20, 1954	187

Something to note is that all of the largest temperature differences also hail from western states.

Longest Standing Records

While the West can claim the extremes of the extreme temperatures and the largest temperature differences, the East can brag about their long-standing records. The top five longest-standing extreme temperature records are all frigidly low temperatures that occurred in the late 1800s in Eastern states. These old records range from -15 to -47 °F.

The longest standing record took place in Randolph, New Hampshire on January 22nd, 1885. There has not been a lower temperature in New Hampshire since Randolph hit -47 °F. The next longest standing record goes Millsboro, Delaware back on January 17th, 1893. Since the city hit -17 °F that day, no other city in Delaware has reached a lower temperature. The third longest standing record occurred in Milligan, Ohio. The city is home to the lowest temperature the state of Ohio has ever seen at -39 °F which took place on February 10, 1899. The coldest temperature Washington D.C. has ever experienced happened way back on February 11, 1899. On this day, the U.S.’s capital hit a low of -15 °F, and nothing has surpassed it since. Minden, Louisiana hit a low of -16 °F on February 13, 1899, and the city has never experienced anything colder since. While Louisiana is more of a south-eastern state, all of the longest standing record holders have ties to the East.

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If your city didn’t quite make this list, don’t sweat it. You can map more than two of your own state’s extreme temperatures with BatchGeo in seconds. And if you’re curious to know more about your state, be sure to check out Flashcard Maps: Learn US State Capitals, Flowers, and Birds.