The Hot Spot

As a follow up to last week's blog post about the cold spot in the state of Alaska, this map shows which station recorded the daily high temperature the most times during 2012. There are three main concentrations. 1) Southeast Alaska is nearly always the warm spot during Winter. 2) the Central Interior is usually warmest in the early and middle Summer. 3) Southcentral Alaska is often warmest in early Summer and early Fall. Unfortunately warm temperatures are subject to more quality control problems than cold temperatures. In both warm and cold seasons, the temperature bias is far more likely to be too warm rather than too cold. Therefore, the coldest temperature readings in winter are likely showing an accurate temperature. However, in the summer, the warmest temperature readings are sometimes bogus. I manually went through the list and threw out as many obviously bad temperatures as I could but it is an imperfect exercise.

Yes, Deadhorse was the warmest day in Alaska on 7/23/12 with a high of 78F. Nuiqsut was #2 at 77F.