Alaska Weather Blog and Alaska Weather Store
Today is the start of the world famous Iditarod trail sled dog race (“the last great race”), so I thought maybe I should give an report on another (unofficial) great race: the Alaska snow race. It has been a very snowy winter in many parts of Alaska and there is plenty of talk and a […]
It’s been a cold winter across most of Alaska. It’s not the first and it won’t be the last. During every winter there are relatively colder and warmer periods. This year these cold snaps and warm spells seem to be aligned pretty well to the calendar months: November was cold, December warm, and January…one of […]
Alaska is a big place, and the weather system affecting our state right now is even bigger, but I’m going to show you that is it the small scale that counts when it comes to winds of the south and southeast coasts. As I write this, virtually the whole state is under the influence of […]
Polar lows are small, somewhat elusive, and usually quite potent…cool stuff for weather watchers. They are small compared to their more common, mid-latitude big brother lows, up to a few hundred miles across, compared to a thousand or more miles across for the later. They are more like the size of hurricanes. For that reason, […]
My tips for witnessing unusual, interesting or simply beautiful weather phenomena have always included spending as much time as possible outdoors and keeping your eyes up, as in looking up at the sky often. A couple days ago I found some unusual weather down at my feet. Snow rollers! My other advice is to always […]
Not all of Alaska is in the rainiest time of the year right now, but the southeast arm of the state, also variously known as the panhandle, the Inside Passage, the Banana Belt, or just plain Southeast sure is. In fact, I like the term rain coast. Farther north the rainiest time tends to be […]
Most Alaskans had reason to complain about the recently departed summer. Not that having a reason has kept anyone from complaining in the past. I invite you to check out the hard data below, compare it with your experience and let’s see if we can come up with an award (sorry no prize money) for […]
Everybody has an impression of how the winter turned out, but what do the numbers say? Was the long-range prediction for the winter I made in November at all accurate? Well, the impression expressed by most folks here in Haines, in the northern panhandle, is that is was a very cold winter. Looking at the […]
The marine forecast has been calling for heavy freezing spray quite a bit the last few weeks, and here is a graphic example of what they are talking about: This is not the Bering Sea, this is Lynn Canal in the “protected” Inside Passage of southeast Alaska! The crabber Perseverance, home port Sitka, pictured above […]
I probably blog too much about Southeast Alaska (it’s where I live), so for this post I’m going as far away from SE as one can go and still be in Alaska. Lets look at what Shemya, near the far western end of the Aleutians, and Barrow, on the peak of Alaska’s roof (and points […]
