Tag Archives: climate

10 December 2019

Winter Warmup

By icefogger
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Map and data credit: NOAA

It isn’t a figment of Alaskans’ imagination: Alaska’s winters are indeed warmer.  Winter months (December through February) have seen a substantial rise in average temperatures over the past fifty years.  The northern part of the state has seen the largest increase, with a 9.0 to 9.2F degree rise, but the entire state is under a warming trend.

 

Nome Sea Ice:

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Data credit: UAF, ACCAP, NOAA, @AlaskaWx

Sea ice off the coast of Nome, Alaska is nonexistent in December, defying the historical record.  Everything but recent history, that is.  The drop off the statistical edge that the graph shows is pretty eye-opening.

The Port of Nome was open and operating at the end of November, which is the latest that has happened on record.

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Nome “Ice” Cam

 

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11 July 2019

“Gasoline on a Stick”

By icefogger

One reason the Shovel Creek Fire has been such a persistent pain for firefighters and locals alike, is that much of the forested area surrounding Murphy Dome is saturated with black spruce. The resins in the black spruce makes the trees highly flammable; once flames hit the boughs, the flames race up the tree with amazing ferocity and speed. A wildfire can double in size very quickly. That is why black spruce has earned the nick-name: “Gasoline on a Stick”.


A firefighting crew on Old Murphy Dome Road, fighting the Shovel Creek Fire; Photo credit: AKFireInfo

The past few days have been brutal, air quality-wise. Fairbanks was way past double the unhealthy level of particulates in the air, and the Murphy Dome area was way past triple on Wednesday. The smoke has been bad enough for my UPS driver to show up wearing a dust mask this week.
Rain is on everyone’s mind, but the forecast is for more lightning than rain drops this coming weekend.

This season, 1.28 million acres have been burned by wildfires. That’s one Rhode Island, every 10 days.

For the first time since records have been kept, NOAA analysis has the July-June (2018-2019) average temperature for the entire state of Alaska at above freezing.

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4 April 2019

Breaking Up

By icefogger

The picture was taken the last day of March. I have never seen The Pond with as much bad ice this early. The open hole is from methane release, which caused the ice to thin just above the methane pocket.

The Nenana River has some open water already, downstream from the Ice Classic Tripod. The earliest the Tanana River has gone out is April 20. Short of an epic cold snap, that record will be broken in 2019.

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2 April 2019

Warmest March on record

By icefogger

Info credit: ACCAP/NOAA; Graphic credit: @AlaskaWx

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26 March 2019

A Warm Winter

By icefogger


Data from NOAA; Collected and graphed by Rick Thoman

Fairbanks could almost call the Winter of 2018-19 as the Winter that Wasn’t. Since September 1st, we have seen 80 days that have been at least 10F degrees warmer than normal. Fairbanks saw 13 days that were 10F degrees or more colder than normal.

For those that like their math: 76% of the days since September 1, have had above normal temperatures in Fairbanks.

By the way, we saw rain yesterday. Rain in March in Fairbanks, Alaska, is not the norm.

To follow Rick Thoman, the Wizard of Climate, check out his twitter-verse: @AlaskaWx

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