Extreme Warmth

An enormous kink in the jet stream over the northeastern Pacific region has brought a tremendous surge of warmth to Alaska in the past few days.  Here are a few of the notable temperature and rain (not snow!) amounts:

Utqiaġvik: 38°F on Monday, low of 32°F
Bettles: 37°F on Monday, 0.21" of rain, no measurable snow
Nome: 43°F, over 1.5" of rain on Saturday/Sunday
McGrath: 53°F on Sunday, and well over an inch of rain over several days; latest on record in the year for such warmth
King Salmon: 60°F - latest 60°F on record by nearly two weeks.  Prior to 2012, 60°F had not been measured after October 4.

The rain eliminated the snow cover across significant portions of the interior, especially in the valley-level southwest.  Here's McGrath this afternoon:

Here's the culprit in terms of the mid-tropospheric flow pattern (500mb map as of 3am AKST on Monday, click to enlarge).

Meanwhile the shortfall of sea ice in the Chukchi Sea is becoming more and more anomalous, as ice growth continues to be very slow indeed to the northwest of Alaska.  Here's an updated chart showing Chukchi ice extent compared to the range of previous years in the satellite era:

Similar to early August, the basin is back to less than 50% of the previous record low ice extent; all previous years (1979-2018) saw more than twice as much ice on this date.

The previous record low for the date was in 2007; here's a comparison of the daily ice extent maps from the two years (rotated for convenience):

October 29, 2019

October 29, 2007

And for comparison, 2012 (the record low Arctic-wide minimum) and 2016 (which took over the previous record low for the Chukchi in early November).

October 29, 2012

October 29, 2016

Snow Cover

Fairbanks saw an inch or two of fresh snow last night and this morning, and most of interior Alaska now has at least a light covering.  The last area to hold out is the low-elevation northwestern interior and parts of the Seward Peninsula, which remain snow-free as of this afternoon.  Here's a satellite photo from 2pm, with the Seward Peninsula at left and the now-icy Yukon River clearly visible.  (As an aside, it's interesting to note several "streaks" of snow cover coming off Kotzebue Sound; I assume these were caused by episodes of heavy snow showers, or clusters of showers, that formed over the (very) warm water.  It looks like much of the western and northern Seward Peninsula also got its snow cover in the same way.)

With a storm system approaching from the southwest (see the thick high clouds at lower left), this may be the last time we see this area without its winter mantle of white.

According to snow cover data at the Rutgers Snow Lab, the normal date for onset of snow cover in the northwest interior is about October 10-12, based on satellite data from 1970-2000; so we're about two weeks late this year.  Here are images showing the daily normal on October 6, 13, and 20.

Comparing today's analysis with last year's for the same date, there is actually considerably more snow cover across both Alaska and western Canada this year; despite very warm waters across the northern Pacific Ocean, the weather pattern has favored relatively chilly conditions over northwestern North America (except at Arctic latitudes) in recent weeks.  However, this is set to change in a big way for Alaska, as the aforementioned storm system over the Aleutians is building a very strong ridge downstream that will bring exceptional warmth to Alaska for at least the next week.  Sadly I wouldn't be surprised if it's even warm enough to wipe out the early snow cover in many areas; we shall see.

Record Summer in Utqiaġvik

Alaska's North Slope is gradually and belatedly cooling off as autumn advances, and today's scene in Utqiaġvik (Barrow) has a more seasonable look with snow on the ground and an early sunset (about 3:30pm solar time) to the southwest.

Teshekpuk Lake, to the southeast of Utqiaġvik and slightly inland, appears to be mostly but not entirely frozen over, judging from a satellite image from this afternoon (click to enlarge, and compare to last week's image):

Rick Thoman noted on Twitter the record-breaking warmth over the summer in Utqiaġvik - the attractive figure below is Rick's creation.  The sum total of heat units for thawing was easily the highest on record and amounted to 3-4 times the totals from some colder years of about a half-century ago.  The monthly TDD totals in both July and September were records, as were the monthly mean temperatures, and both by a large margin.

Here's a chart showing the 365-day running average temperature since 1930 in Utqiaġvik, plotted in degrees Celsius to highlight the diminishing difference from 0°C/32°F.  One could be forgiven for thinking that the upward trend is accelerating, as the past few years have been really extraordinary.

The chart below provides a closer look at the last 25 years.  It's curious to see how the temperature "broke out" in 2016-2017, as it suddenly exceeded a level (around -9°C) that previously served as an approximate upper limit, and ever since then it has remained above that level.  Those who are familiar with technical analysis in the financial markets will recognize this kind of behavior, as financial instruments like stocks tend to show "resistance" and "support" levels in the price action.  Perhaps some of the same tendencies can emerge from systems governed by physical laws rather than laws of human behavior.

Upper Tanana snowstorm

Following up on Rick's post yesterday, it's interesting to look at the analysis charts from last week's snowstorm in the upper Tanana valley.  Maps shown below are courtesy of Environment Canada's analysis page:

https://www.weather.gc.ca/analysis/index_e.html

The fundamental cause of the event was a very strong upper-level trough that migrated eastward and slightly southward from the central Bering Sea across southwestern Alaska to the northern Gulf of Alaska.  Below are 500mb maps from 3am AKST Thursday, 3pm Thursday, and 3am Friday; the "x" symbol marks the center of the upper-level low ("L").  Click to enlarge.

The system intensified considerably as it approached the Gulf of Alaska on Thursday, and a strong surface low pressure system quickly developed just to the south of the Alaska coastline on Thursday night, as illustrated by the surface charts from 3pm Thursday, 3am Friday, and 3pm Friday:

The north and northwest side of a strong low pressure system is a "good" place to be for heavy snowfall (in the Northern Hemisphere), assuming there is sufficient cold air in place; think of the coastal winter storms that occasionally affect the northeastern states of the Lower 48.  In this case, remarkably, the storm was able to produce a heavy band of snow on the interior side of the Alaska Range, i.e. in the upper Tanana River valley; this is a climatologically unfavorable area for heavy snow, because of the prevalence of dry downslope flow from the south - but this setup was very different from normal.

Rick highlighted the contrast in snow cover across the southern interior, and I too grabbed yesterday's beautiful satellite image to get a wider view.  The red dot marks the approximate location of Fairbanks (click to enlarge).

Particularly noteworthy to me are the obvious lack of Arctic sea ice - a remarkable sight for mid-October - and the still-unfrozen surface of North Slope lakes such as Teshekpuk Lake.  Here are a couple of yesterday's webcam views of Tesh Lake, showing just a little near-shore ice.  It would be interesting to take a look at observations of this summer's lake water temperature compared to previous years.

However, the situation has changed a bit today.

Freeze-up progress has been more substantial on Toolik Lake - recall it was still mostly open a week ago.

How about the rivers?  Ice was developing quickly in the Koyuk River at Norton Bay yesterday.

Some scattered ice is running in the Tanana River at Nenana today:

But as of yesterday the George Black ferry was still crossing the river at Dawson City in the Yukon:

Snow Cover in the Interior

Rick T. here with with a (mostly) clear sky from Monday afternoon October 14, 2019, showing a fairly well defined line between areas to the south and east of Fairbanks that picked up quite a bit snow during the second week of October and areas to the west, where low elevations are still snow-free. Urban Fairbanks is right on the edge. The snowfall from Delta  Junction southeastward was quite impressive. 15" of snow at Tok was the greatest October snowstorm (over two days) there on record (climate obs since the late 1950s) and second greatest overall. Delta Junction does not often get a foot of snow in one pop, but they did from this event, including severe drifting. 

Snow Arrives

As befits the date on the calendar, snow cover has started expanding across Alaska, with many northern and/or elevated locations now seeing a light covering.  This afternoon's land cover classification image from the Suomi polar orbiter is obscured by cloud cover across much of western Alaska and parts of the North Slope, but nevertheless the image clearly shows some snow on the ground in much of the north (except the Yukon Flats) as well as the Yukon-Tanana uplands.

FAA webcams revealed a pretty scene in Bettles this morning, where the temperature dropped to a chilly but not unusual +7°F.

Up in the northeast at Arctic Village, things are starting to look wintry as well, with a covering of ice on the ponds.

But perhaps surprisingly, Toolik Lake (on the north side of the Brooks Range) is not yet frozen over despite some rather chilly weather in the last couple of weeks.

Moving farther north still, Teshekpuk Lake shows no sign of any ice yet, and the same appears to be true of the smaller lake that's visible on the webcam at Inigok:

And finally, today's climate report from Utqiaġvik stated that there was zero snow on the ground, although the webcam view from earlier today suggests this may not be accurate (or is no longer true):

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the first measurable snow of the season has never occurred in Fairbanks earlier than in Utqiaġvik, but this year there has at least been a tie, and Fairbanks may in fact have been earlier (the daily snow numbers are missing from Utqiaġvik for Oct 5th and 6th).

The absence of snow in the north until now is not because it's been dry; Utqiaġvik had nearly an inch of precipitation in the second half of September, but it nearly all fell as rain (there was just a trace of snow).  The average temperature for September was easily the highest on record, exceeding 40°F for the first time on record, and every single day had a daily mean temperature above freezing (also for the first time).  Previously the latest arrival of a sub-freezing daily mean temperature was September 30, 1998, but Utqiaġvik has yet to see such a day this autumn.  And so the warmth in Alaska's far north continues to break records as the trend of recent years persists apparently unabated.