Summer Wind

Here's a bit of follow-up on the remarkably windy summer that occurred over parts of western Alaska.  According to ERA5 data, the June-August average 10m wind speed was the highest since at least 1940 for areas shaded in red below:

The east end of Norton Sound was perhaps the epicenter of the anomaly, including communities like Shaktoolik and Unalakleet.

To confirm that this isn't just a model artifact, here's the history of June-August wind speed measured at the Unalakleet airport since 1991:

The airport instruments have been classified as an AWOS platform since 1991, so I have some confidence that the wind measurements are relatively consistent since then.

The seasonal mean wind speed of just over 11 mph may not seem like much, and indeed it isn't much compared to winter wind speeds in Unalakleet: the average wind speed is over 15 mph in February.  But it's historically very unusual for the time of year: 8 separate days had a daily mean wind speed over 20 mph, compared to a previous (post-1990) record of 5 days, and over 30 days this summer saw peak sustained winds over 20 mph (normal is 16 days).

Here's a chart of daily average winds compared to a 20-year normal, for an ERA5 grid cell very close to Unalakleet.

Most of the wind action was in July and August, with the early July event standing out dramatically: that was when the pattern suddenly changed to westerly, as we noted at the time:

https://ak-wx.blogspot.com/2024/07/big-pattern-change.html