Alaska Weather Blog and Alaska Weather Store
It’s not often that the warmest time of the day is early in the morning, but that was the surprising fact at many locations in Alaska’s panhandle today. A small but potent low with a defined push of warm air on its eastern flank (the warm front) moved north last night and during the early […]
There has been a lot of snow this winter in many parts of Alaska. Here are some maps of snow depth from the Alaska River Forecast Center. Keep in mind many are from remote automated stations, some at high elevation. Fairbanks and other parts of the interior were hit hard over the Christmas holiday with […]
Southeast Alaska was hit hard Friday night, October 1st, 2021. High wind, heavy rain throughout, and, at quite a few locations, thunderstorms and even hail. Fortunately, in most places the worst was relatively short-lived. The storm was a potent one for the first of October. I’ll do the usual play-by-play and statistics, then examine a […]
Oftentimes the most interesting weather situations are from small-scale storms or processes. In this blog we’ll examine one such feature that produced some impressive winds in the northern part of Alaska’s panhandle.
Thursday’s (6/20/19) high of 73F (23C) in Utqiagvik (Barrow) set a new all-June high temperature record for the station and exemplifies a phenomena I (and I’m sure others) call a coastal temperature spike, though the term has not made it into any meteorological glossaries that I know of. Highs were in the 30s F (~3C) […]
Thirteen days in a row with highs in the 70s F (21-26 C) (but not hotter) in southeast Alaska is quite notable. This is what just ended in Haines, and close to it in Petersburg and Wrangell. This graph shows the nice consistent dirunal (day-night) pattern of clear weather at Haines. (The data is from the airport, where on the 20th it did not quite make it to 70, but it did at the slightly warmer climate station, so that’s where the 13 days is).
We’ve been on this roller coaster before, but recent heat in southern Southeast Alaska took us to new heights. Sunday, January 14th saw many records broken around SE including a new record high for any January temperature in any place in Alaska with reliable records. The new record of 66 F (18.7 C) was set […]
We’ve had some warm days lately in northern Southeast Alaska, and if perception is worth anything, it always feels warmer just coming off winter. Actually much of Alaska feels this surge of warmth in May (and sometimes in April), but it is a time of the year when southeast can keep up with the interior […]
Lately around here we’ve been blessed with decent snow cover. A nice change from the last two winters. Nice fresh show that stays fresh thanks to lack of warm surges. To add to the beautiful scene, the snow has had lots of sparkles of light reflecting off the surface from the bright moon or nearby lights (there’s plenty of time to see this with days still solstice short).
Of all the weather elements, precipitation seems the most chaotic when it comes to spatial and temporal patterns. In reality, I think wind is probably more variable over both time and distance, but I guess we must understand that, since we don’t talk about it nearly as much as peculiar precipitation patterns such as long […]
