July Climate Data

This is a few days late, but here's a look back at the climate anomalies for July.  The monthly mean circulation pattern was dominated by an unusually strong trough near the Bering Strait, but remarkably this pattern only occurred for about a week shortly after the middle of the month - but the trough was so anomalous that it overwhelmed the more mundane features in the rest of the month.  I wrote about the "Arctic vortex" at the time:

http://ak-wx.blogspot.com/2022/07/arctic-vortex.html

The ridge to the south of Alaska was associated with extremely warm SSTs in the central North Pacific:

Alaska's statewide average temperature took a big dive just before the middle of the month in association with the pattern change, mercifully bringing an end to the fire season.  Here's the UAF/ACCAP temperature index zoomed in for July:

Generally the northwest of the state was a bit cooler than normal overall for July, but Southeast Alaska was slightly above normal.  As for precipitation, it was below normal in the eastern interior but above normal in the west, and much above in parts of south-central Alaska.  The change to wet in the south-central and southwestern mainland was enough to quickly erase early summer drought; it was a dramatic change.  Graphics below are from Rick Thoman's Twitter feed:
 

Below are my usual rank maps based on the NOAA/NCEI climate division data.  Disregard the significantly colder than normal result for the North Slope division: I don't believe it's correct, and this isn't the first time with a problem in the preliminary North Slope temperature number.  The precipitation rank (higher than anything in the last 30 years) is more reasonable: Utqiaġvik saw a remarkable 1.42" of rain on the 26th, the highest 24-hour precipitation amount on record, with data back to 1920.  It's an astonishing amount of rain for the location.

To complement the picture with much better detail, here are the ERA5 reanalysis maps; it's interesting to see the contrast between warmth in Norton Sound and cold in Chukotka and the western Chukchi Sea.