Here's a map showing the number of daily high temperature records that were tied or broken in the past 10 days; this includes record highs for either daily maximum or minimum temperature. The period of record varies across the sites.
Here's an estimate of the 500mb height (pressure) departure from normal in the 7-day window ending tomorrow; the epicenter of the ridge is nearly 3 standard deviations above normal in the vicinity of Kodiak Island.
The MSLP map for the same period emphasizes the low pressure anomaly from the western Bering Sea to the Chukchi Sea:
As winter develops, a typical El Niño pattern would involve the anomalous low pressure area becoming more dominant across the Bering Sea and into the Gulf of Alaska, and indeed the forecast models indicate a transition toward this El Niño-like pattern in the coming days. The latest forecast from Google's WeatherNext3 model looks very El Niño-like; notice the big ridge over Canada, which will undoubtedly be a major feature of this winter:
The influx of moisture from the southwest has produced significant interior snows where it's been cold enough: for example, in Bettles, where 14 inches of snow on the ground is the highest for the date since 1994. Fairbanks snowpack is up to 9 inches, following a wet 5-inch snowfall on Monday.
One more comment: before the recent warm-up, the Arctic coast had been running quite cool compared to Octobers of recent years. Utqiaġvik had its coldest first half of October since 2001 owing to a strongly positive Arctic Oscillation; but that anomaly has now been erased, and October will go into the books with a mean temperature comparable to recent years.
All the snow melted here in Point Hope. Its been raining all day and the ground has thawed too. It's been so mild that I have an open water line that I am insulating tomorrow, but its been open for two days and has not been an issue!
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