The contrast with last winter has become pronounced since the beginning of the year: from January 1 to present, only one day had a higher statewide minimum than the same date in 2016. The Kanuti Lake SCAN site dropped below -50°F again this morning, so that makes the 4th separate episode with sub-minus 50°F observed in Alaska; and that's a lot more like normal than recent winters.
Update Feb 22: here's the same chart for the two prior winters, 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. A similar peak occurred at the turn of the year in 2014-2015, so this is the third winter in a row with this feature. Based on the current forecast, it looks like this will also be the third year in a row with a notable late February warm spell.
Enough of this cold and snow...moving right along it looks like these forecasts indicate La Nina is waning and a neutral to El Nino event is possible.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
Gary
Gary, yes some of the models are quite aggressive with their El Nino forecasts. I'm not buying it just yet; they were also much too aggressive back in 2014, as I recall. But La Nina is certainly on the way out.
DeleteIsn't it a wonderful coincidence that temperatures for both years follow each other relatively closely. They both first bottom out at the beginning of December. Then rise to the beginning of January. Fall till around January 20th. Rising till today. I predict that it will be relatively warm till the beginning of March and then cool off for the month.
ReplyDeleteWell spotted Eric. For fun, I added the previous two winters; 2014-2015 was also similar in some respects. Quite a coincidence!
DeleteGood obs Eric...maybe the WX follows the bouncing ball for some good reason.
ReplyDeleteGary
Interesting graph for several reasons besides your main point and the matching spikes and dips, as noted: That last year's cold dip at the end of March/1st of April occurred at the same time that all-time March record highs were being broken from Eagle to Homer to the panhandle. And the sobering fact that for half the year, somewhere in Alaska gets below zero!
ReplyDeleteGreat comment, Jim. We noted the contrast at the end of March here:
Deletehttp://ak-wx.blogspot.com/2016/03/statewide-extremes.html
It was -40° at Colville Village on April 1st!