Anchorage has seen another big snow event this week, occurring three weeks after the record (for January) snowstorm earlier in the month. The new snow accumulation of 11 inches takes the January total to just over 40 inches, which is a record for the monthly total. It's also the fifth snowiest calendar month in the modern Anchorage climate history (1953-present).
Here's a visualization of calendar month snow totals in Anchorage, with the top 10 events for the main snow months marked in red. February has two huge outliers - 1996 and 1955 - but the most favored month for big totals is clearly December.
The climatological drop-off in January is actually rather significant; December reaches 20" over a third of the time (26 of 73 years), while January sees 20" in less than 15% of years (10 of 73, including 2026). So this month's big snow total is a notable outlier for the time of year.
Another interesting tidbit is the preponderance of high monthly totals in recent years: 2023 saw the snowiest November, 2022 and 2023 had the 2nd and 3rd snowiest Decembers, and now we have the snowiest January. February 2023 gets an honorable mention with the 4th snowiest February (32"). These are good times for snow lovers in Anchorage.
The statistics are at least as striking when we look at liquid equivalent precipitation in Anchorage, i.e. it's been wet in recent winters.
2022 - 2nd wettest February
2022 - wettest December
2023 - wettest November
2025 - 3rd wettest January
2026 - wettest January
What changed in 2022? The PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation), for one thing:
See this 2022 post for some comments on the correlation between the PDO and Anchorage snowfall:
https://ak-wx.blogspot.com/2022/12/anchorage-snow.html
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