Some Unusual Warmth

Temperatures have been quite variable for much of the state in the past couple of weeks, as the flow pattern has been generally "blocked" with high pressure in the Arctic and (unusually) low pressure in the Gulf of Alaska.  In a circulation with high-latitude blocking, the jet stream tends to meander more unpredictably than normal, and of course the surface weather depends on where you find yourself with respect to those atmospheric eddies and swirls.

The northern interior has been perhaps the main beneficiary (if warm weather is considered a good thing); Bettles has seen temperatures above 70°F on all but 4 days this month so far.  The 12 days with a high temperature of 72°F or higher so far this year is unusual, although the record is 17 back in 2010 (through June 16).

Nome also had a mini-heatwave a week ago, with the temperature rising to 77°F last Monday.  This isn't the earliest on record for such warmth - it reached 78°F at the end of May in 1981 - but again it's unusual.  It also illustrates the positive skewness of the temperature distribution at this time of year in Nome: large warm departures from normal are more common than equally large cold departures.  For example, the normal daily high temperature in Nome on June 10 is 54°F, so last Monday was 23°F warmer than normal.  Imagine a day 23°F colder than normal: the high temperature would be only 31°F, but that has never happened (since 1907) in Nome in the month of June; the latest is May 28 (1934), and in more recent years May 24 (2001).

A decade ago, Brian Brettschneider illustrated the spatial distribution of daily mean temperature skewness across Alaska: check out the maps at this old post.

https://ak-wx.blogspot.com/2014/03/temperature-skewness-maps.html

Note that this is for daily mean temperature, and there would be some differences for daily max and min temperatures.