Record Sea Ice

The remarkable cold spell of the past few weeks has produced a major southward expansion of sea ice in the eastern Bering Sea.  Here's the latest NWS sea ice analysis (click to enlarge):

The analysis shows that the north side of the Alaska Peninsula is entirely iced in, and some ice has reached Unimak Island.  Perhaps not surprisingly, Cold Bay saw a daily record low temperature on Thursday: -3°F.  Only two other dates in Cold Bay (since 1950) saw temperatures this low so late in the season (in 2012 and 1976).

Looking at NSIDC sea ice data back to 1978, the ice extent to the east of 170°W is the greatest on record for any date, exceeding the March 2012 record as of yesterday's analysis.  The recovery from the last 12 seasons of low maximum ice extent is sudden and impressive.  (But note that Arctic-wide sea ice remains far below normal - actually the lowest on record at this time!)

It's an interesting question as to the last time sea ice was observed along the north shore of Unimak Island.  Ice is not too uncommon historically in Isanotski Strait (False Pass) to the east of the island, and the following site indicates that ice "rarely" reaches Unimak Pass to the west, but I'm not sure that has happened since 1978.  I'll dig into the NSIDC data a bit more to look for a firm answer.

https://unimak.us/climate.shtml