In mid-November, the sun dipped below the horizon in the Alaskan city聽of聽Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), and it won鈥檛 be back until January 23. This solar retreat marks the beginning of a long, dark season for the nation鈥檚 largest and most frigid state, but this year聽it took awhile for Alaska to get, well, frigid. Parts of the state endured record warmth throughout the fall, an all-too-familiar pattern of unusually toasty weather across North America.
We like to complain about wild weather here in the continental United States, but our faraway frontier has most of the other states beat. The Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska churn out some of the strongest storms on earth. Fairbanks is the coldest major city in the country, regularly seeing temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Yet throughout Alaska, summer tried to hang on for as long as possible despite the increasingly low sun angles. The state experienced聽its warmest October on record,聽finishing an average of nine聽degrees above normal. Anchorage鈥檚 airport didn鈥檛 record a temperature below freezing until October 28鈥攖he latest first freeze ever recorded there and more than a month later than normal. Fairbanks, located in east-central Alaska, barely saw more than a dusting of snow that month, making it the second-lowest snowfall at that time in nearly a century. Juneau, the capital city, in Alaska鈥檚 southeastern panhandle, saw one of its driest autumns on record, too.
Warmer- and drier-than-normal weather over Alaska usually coincides with similar conditions on聽the West Coast. This year鈥檚 delayed start to California鈥檚 rainy season that allowed the Camp Fire to grow into one of the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in modern history. Going from one extreme to the other, some parts of the central and eastern United States saw record rainfall over the past couple of months, including in central Texas and even greater rain totals across the Carolinas as a result of Hurricane Florence.
We can鈥檛 ignore the role of climate change in the overall increase in temperatures across the continent. And few parts of the world have experienced more direct effects than the northern latitudes. Weather records collected by the NOAA and compiled聽by the database聽 show that daily average temperatures recorded at the airports in Anchorage, Juneau, and Fairbanks have all risen by around two聽degrees since the mid-1900s. Four of the ten聽warmest high temperatures ever recorded in Anchorage have occurred in the past five years.
The ocean is feeling it, too. Recent observations show that water temperatures at the bottom of the Bering Sea have 聽since the beginning of the decade. Farther north,聽the historic decline in both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice . In fact聽it聽is so dramatic that a cargo ship between Russia and Germany in September, a feat thought impossible just a decade ago.
While the sun鈥檚 steady march below the horizon will force Alaska into the depths of winter regardless of prevailing weather patterns, the 聽offers聽decent odds that average temperatures across the state will likely remain well above normal through the season.