Season-to-Date 60, 70, and 80 Degree Days

With all of the talk about the number of 70 and 80 degree days so far this summer, it seems like a good time to take a preliminary look at season total up to this point in the year. The following three maps show the number of 60, 70, and 80 degree days across Alaska in 2013. There are 172 stations that have a reported temperatures through mid-August (61 Coop, 54 RAWS, and 57 NOAA). The analysis utilized an inverse distance weighting (IDW) algorithm to estimate values for all location. It is not an "exact fit" technique so some stations may be shown in a different category than their data would otherwise indicate. In other instances, the best guess by the program is clearly erroneous (e.g., Alaska Range, St. Lawrence Island, etc.) since it uses the values of the 6 nearest stations. Sometime toward the end of September and end-of-season analysis will be done. Note: Some of the RAWS data in particular may have a warm bias.