What should be the coldest period of the day?

When there are no clouds to trap the heat in. Maybe where you live more clouds or any airborne particulate form trapping heat in when it cools..

Here clouds are a difference of 20 degrees.

At 5pm there is still warmth from the day usually. You have to wait until long after the sun goes down for the coldest temperatures, unless there is a cold front coming through, then temperatures can dip tremendously at any time of the day.

Usually, it’s coldest in the middle of the night. The wee hours like 2am.

The time of the day when the temperature is at it’s lowest point.

Usually that’s true whether you’re inside or outside.

I’ve done a lot of camping and other types of outdoor living. Eliminating other factors, such as storms, cloud cover, time of year, etc., I’ve found the coldest time of day is right after sunrise. The air has had all night to cool, and it takes a certain amount of time to start to feel the effects of the sun.

Okay everyone, but how can it be regularly, insanely cold at around 5 and then not even recognizable as the same day, kind of temprature the closer and closer and closer into midnight? I mean re-gu-la-rly.

Are you near a body of water?

You are talking about outside right? Not in your house. Is it more still where you are at night?

It’s not the heat. It’s the humidity.

You generally will eat dinner right around the 5–6 pm hour and digesting food requires a generous slug of BTU/energy to do so and why you will feel cooler at those hours as your body uses your energy to digest your food and more so than later as your bodies digestive system slows down and re-warms up prior to bed time. Have a cup of warm herbal tea to help get you over those cooler hour bumps.

On days when the humidity (measured in particles of water per millimeter) is high, the sun’s heat is stored in the water molecules and will slowly release over night causing warm nights. On days when the humidity is low, when there are fewer molecules of water in the air, the heat isn’t stored as efficiently and this allows the heat to escape the surface of the earth, allowing the surface atmosphere to cool more rapidly than days of high humidity.

That is why temperatures in the arid Mohave Desert can reach 120F in the daytime and drop to 45F at night. And that is why temperatures in the humid jungles of the Yucatan can reach 100F in the daytime and then maintain temps in the 90sF all night long. You simply may be having days with low humidity. And that is why it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.

The early hours of the morning is the time I find coldest.

I believe weather forecasters call it “heat lag.” The atmosphere continues to heat up into the evening from the accumulative heat of the day..
Just before the sun comes up is when it should be the coldest, barring any incoming cold fronts.

Okay I’m digesting the answers. Thank you all.

Midnight when the fog rolls in off the Pacific Ocean.

I’ve spent many nights outdoors for one reason or another, and generally speakingthe coldest part of the day is usually about an hour after sunrise. Most exceptions to this generalization have to do with cold fronts or other more extreme weather changes.