Warm Day up North

Photo courtesy of the FAA

Temperatures Tuesday made it into the 70s almost right to the Beaufort Sea coast. High temperatures included 74F at Deadhorse and Kuparuk, 73F at Nuiiqsut and 72F at Alpine. Colville Village, north of Nuiquit, held at 69F. Continued southwest winds kept the offshore wind going overnight, so overnight lows were mostly in the 50s. The photo from Deadhorse this morning shows lots of water showing up on the Prudhoe Bay area lakes.

Wonder Lake View

Nice photo of Denali from the near the Wonder Lake rangers station Tuesday morning. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.

Arctic Sea Ice

Sea ice coverage in the Arctic Basin was pretty close to normal during the spring, but has been decreasing much faster than usual the past several weeks. To the right below is the Alaska-centric view of coverage as of Monday, June 18th. Notice that the Bering Sea is nearly ice free now. On the left is the plot of total areal coverage from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, illustrating the dramatic decrease since the end of May, and is a result of so much of the Arctic sea ice now being first year ice, that is, ice that formed this past winter, which is not very thick and susceptible to summer melt.This is evidently the lowest total sea ice coverage for mid June in the satellite era (1979-present)

Courtesy of the University of Illinois

Courtesy of NSIDC

Nice photo Saturday afternoon from the Ester Dome webcam, looking southeast across town and the Flats, with a flat topped cumulus producing some light rain down toward North Pole. Image courtesy of the FAA.

Fairbanks Temperatures

Here's an update on Fairbanks temperatures, with my preferred standardized anomaly plot. The three to four week cycle that temperature  followed over the winter has, as expected, somewhat broken down. The chart also illustrates that the warm weather earlier this month (mean temperature of 69F on the 8th), was, relative to the typically variability for a given time of year, the farthest above normal for any day this year.

Catching Up

Back in town. Some highlights:

Keystone Ridge had 16 days in May with exactly a trace of precip. Only eight days with measurable precip.

As of Thursday morning, Jun 14, total acreage burned in Alaska so far is just of 33,000 acres.

More to come as I get caught up.

Even Bigger Lightning Day

This has been an active week for thunder, with Monday being the first day of the season with more than 1000 strikes. Tuesday was even more active, with more than 4000 strikes in the Interior, with many fire starts.

Traveling

I'm traveling for a couple weeks so posting will be light o rmaybe none, depending on connectivity issues.

First Big Lightning Day

The thunder season has gotten off to an early, but otherwise slow start. Up until Tuesday, there had not yet been a day with even 100 strikes state-wide. That changed big-time Tuesday as a strong trough aloft touched off more than 700 strikes, most of them in an arc from Old Crow, YT southwest to the Nulato Hills. The trough passed through Fairbanks-land mid-AM, too early to touch off thunder. There were very few early afternoon in the uplands north of the Steese Highway. This is the latest date for the first 100 strike day since 2001.

High Water Follow-up

Here's an update on the high water over the holiday weekend. At the left are Monday morning hydrographs for the upper Chena and lower Salcha Rivers. The peak stage Saturday on the Salcha was the highest stage in four years, and on the Chena the highest since 2003. The Chena at Fairbanks crested Sunday at 6.4 feet, which is notable mostly in that it's a five foot rise since last week.

It's a Soaker

 May only rarely brings soaking stratiform rains that send Interior Rivers out of their banks, but this is one of them. Here is the Saturday morning hydrograph from the Chena River near the Mile 40 Bridge. In addition to much more rain than anticipated, this rain also accelerated high elevation snowmelt. At the Munson Ridge SNOTEL, at 3100' MSL south of Chena Hot Springs, there was still a snow depth of four inches being reported Friday morning, which is now down to one inch, which is at the noise level. Fairbanks Airport set a new precipitation record Friday with 0.52 inches of rain.

Other rain amounts in the area include
Salcha River RAWS: 1.23 inches
Mile 40 Chena Hot Springs Road: 0.99 inches
Birch Lake RWIS: 0.94 inches
Woodsmoke near North Pole: 0.77 inches
Fort Knox Mine: 0.70 inches
Keystone Ridge: 0.68 inches
Aurora: 0.62 inches
Fairbanks Mid-town: 0.59 inches

Summer Rains

It's a sure sign on summer when I start posting hydrographs. Here is the plot of observed and forecast stages on the Salcha River at the Richardson Highway bridge. Water levels have been rising in response to showers the last few days, and will rise more with the steady rains today. Since late Thursday evening, rainfall amounts of a quarter to one inch of rain has been common, with the highest amounts east of Fairbanks and the lowest west of town.

Rain

After two weeks of sprinkles, most parts of Fairbanks-land received measurable rain Wednesday from showers. However, as expected in showery precipitation, amounts were highly variable. Photo from Thursday morning looking south from UAF West Ridge, courtsey of the Alaska Climate Research Center

Rainfall Wednesday included:

Keystone Ridge: 0.28 inches
UAF West Ridge: 0.20 inches
Fort Knox Mine: 0.17 inches
Goldstream Creek: 0.15 inches
Fairbanks Airport: 0.04 inches
East Farmers Loop: 0.02 inches
Aurora: 0.02 inches
Eielson AFB: 0.01 inches
North Pole: Trace

First 70 in Fairbanks

Fairbanks Airport made 70F today for the first time this year. This is exactly the average date (1930-2011) for the first 70º temperature.