Why You Don't Want To Be In Alaska This Month

Ice fog often forms around Fairbanks, Alaska, when it gets very
cold, like it is now up there. Photo by John Dougherty/KTVF

Frankly, I would never want to be in Alaska in January. No matter which year.

Heck, I'm such a wimp that I'm too cold this month in Vermont, and it's been a much warmer than normal January.

Not so in Alaska. That state came off its warmest year on record in 2019 but that northern state has had quite a flip to start 2020.  

It's damn cold up there, even by their standards.

Take Fairbanks, Alaska (Please!). The average temperature there so far this month is -21.2 degrees Which is 13.1 degrees below normal through January 27. (That their normal January temperature is alround 8 below is another chilly story).

It's been at least 30 below on 16 days this month in Fairbanks, with the lowest reading dropping to 43 below On ten days, the high failed to get above minus 20.

Unbelievably, the odd thing about the cold in Fairbanks is not how frigid it is. It's just that it's been consistently cold.  Fairbanks typically gets January "thaws" in which you get spells in temperatures rise all the way into the teens and 20s above zero. But not this year. The hottest day so far this January up there reached to 4 above zero.

The Fairbanks cold is nowhere near to breaking any records. While many nights have gotten into the 30s below zero this month, most record daily record lows in January are within a few degrees either side of minus 60.  Ugh!

Down in "tropical" southern Alaska, its the same cold story this month.   Anchorage has never had a January in which the temperature has failed to get to 24 degrees or above. This month, it has only gotten as high as 22 degrees this month.  There is a chance, just a chance it could get warmer than that in Anchorage Wednesday before the frigid air returns.

Not all of Alaska is in their version of the deep freeze. On the northern tip of Alaska, the community of  Utqiagvik, formerly Barrow has had an average temperature so far this month of minus 11.3 degrees. That sounds awful, but that's still 1.9 degrees warmer than average.

It's this cold in Alaska this winter because the overall weather pattern is vastly different than it has been in recent winters.  Winters lately have featured relatively weak jet stream and steering pattern winds over the Arctic.

That helped create big dips and bulges in the jet stream. That pattern has allowed big chunks of very cold air to plunge south into places like the United States. It also allowed plumes of mild air to stream north into places like Alaska.

This year, the jet stream winds in the northern hemisphere are pretty strong and generally west to east, keeping the cold air bottled up in the far north. It also keeps the Polar Vortex way up there.

The Polar Vortex, as you remember, is this very normal pool of frigid air up over the Arctic. Sometimes, pieces of it break off, causing those frigid outbreaks in places like the United States and western Europe.  Not this year. That's why it's been such a warm January across most of the continental U.S., including here in Vermont.

It's hard to say whether this pattern will maintain itself through the rest of the winter and early spring.

There are a few signs that the jet stream might buckle a little bit, allowing a few squirts of Arctic air into places like the United States, and a few shots of somewhat milder air to go up into Alaska. We'll see!

I guess it was time for Alaska to turn cold. As noted above the year 2019 was easily the warmest year on record in Alaska. Four of the last six years in Alaska have been the warmest on record, so this January has been an exception, for sure.