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.

August World's Second Hottest, With Some Particular Standout Places

Another month, another red global map. Most places were once
again warmer than normal during August. 

The global temperature figures are in for August and hot times continue. For the world as a whole, August, 2019 was the second warmest August on record, says the National Centers For Environmental Information. 

The oceans were the hottest on record for August.  Due to some cool spots in the southern hemisphere, global land temperatures were fourth warmest on record, so August, 2016 remains Number 1.  

The Northern Hemisphere had its hottest summer on record. Not surprisingly, then, Arctic sea ice in August was at its second lowest level on record.

So far, 2019 is the third warmest on record and the year as a whole is almost guaranteed to be among the five hottest. September is off to a hot start in much of the globe, too, so that will count for something.

There have been some strange local records in recent weeks. The town of Utquiagvik, formerly Barrow on the northern tip of Alaska is usually a pretty cold place with no growing season. Subfreezing temperatures often occur there even in July.

This year, Utquiagvik actually DID have a growing season. As of Sunday, the town has been above freezing since June 25. That's 83 consecutive days above freezing in Utquiagvik. Another remarkable thing is the normal low temperature in early September there is about 30 degrees. Yes, below freezing.

Meanwhile, unlike northern Alaska, Hawaii is supposed to be warm, but this is ridiculous. Since April, Honolulu has broken 16 record highs and tied 19 others, says Hawaii News Now. 

On 28 of the 29 days ending Sunday, record high temperatures occurred somewhere in Hawaii, says Maui Now. 

An intense heat wave has gripped he Deep South, all month, with dozens upon dozens of record highs falling.  Some cities have reported all-time record highs for September.

Here in Vermont, we continue to enjoy a relatively cool September. The sun will be out all week, and by the weekend, we, too will share in the summer-like weather. It could easily be in the low 80s here by Saturday and Sundayh.

Arctic Summer Has Been Too Much Like What We Normally Get

X marks the spot where the North Pole is on this map. Red box
points to where there was lightning recently. 

Time to check in once again to the not-so-Great White North, meaning the Arctic, which continues to have an extraordinarily hot summer.

You've seen some posts this summer noting how hot it is up there, but the news keeps coming. Alaska beach weather. Arctic wildfires. Summer thunderstorms rattling around the North Pole.

This in an area that is normally bleak and chilly despite the usual 24-hour a day sun in the first half of summer.

LIGHTNING NEAR NORTH POLE

Here in Vermont, we endured lightning strikes every summer.  That's just normal this time of year around here. But recently. lightning was also striking within 300 miles of the North Pole, which is really something.

In general, if you want a thunderstorm, it's fine to have cold, dry air aloft, but you need relatively warm, humid air near the surface.  We get that here in Vermont in the summer, so we have thunderstorms. As does pretty much everybody else in the mid-latitudes.

The Arctic has always had plenty of cold, dry air around. But warmth and humidity, at least compared to what it normally is up there, is usually scarce. Which means so are thunderstorms.

It's possible there has been lightning that far north before, but nobody that I've found knows of it. And one thunderstorm doesn't prove climate change. But this is odd. And warm.

It does make sense that lightning could become more common in the Arctic. There are signs it already is getting more frequent.  When the Arctic ocean is more ice covered, that stabilizes and chills the air, squelching any attempts at the billowing clouds that can produce lightning.

When there's open water, it can collect more heat, creating rising air currents and produce thunderstorms under the right conditions. Arctic sea ice is at its lowest level on record for this time of year, so it's kinda not surprising they had a weird thunderstorm up there.

The thunderstorms occurred in an area that was frozen over. But open water was just 150 miles away. The storms apparently got going there, over the open water, then moved north. 

ALASKA HEAT UPDATE

The ever helpful Category 6 weather and climate blog has given us a nice update on this summer in Alaska, which statewide, was the hottest on record.

The records are incredible, but the town that takes the cake in my opinion is Kotzebue, along the coast in northwestern Alaska. May, June and July there were the hottest on record. They have not had a single cooler than normal day since February 14! The last time Kotzebue had a cooler than normal month was two years ago.

That pretty much the entire state of Alaska was record warm in July is particularly incredible considering how vast it is. Superimpose Alaska on the Lower 48 and it covers the entire middle of the nation.

So far, the warm Alaska summer has extended through the first half of August.  Another heat ridge might build up there over the coming week or two, which would prolong the odd hot summer in Alaska.

SEA ICE AND OUR WINTERS

At least one new study suggests that melting sea ice is NOT
making our winter in Vermont more harsh. The debate continues....

As I've mentioned in previous blog posts here, some climate scientists have been wondering if the loss of Arctic sea ice have been making winters here in Vermont, elsewhere in the United States and in Europe harsher.

The theory is that the loss of sea ice makes the jet stream wavier and helps get it stuck,  causing cold air to plunge down on us from the north.

A new study questions this theory.  As ScienceDaily points out, the study says that although low winter Arctic ice levels and tough winters here often coincide, the low sea ice isn't having a big influence on these winters.

With or without climate change, Arctic sea ice levels fluctuate year to year. Sometimes there's not much ice, other times there's quite a bit. The overall trend is down for the ice, but it's not a steady drop over years and decades.

Atmospheric weather patterns tend to promote particularly relatively small amounts of sea ice in the Arctic during some winters. Those same weather patterns cause cold snowy winters in eastern North America and western Europe.

This won't be the final word on this issue. I'm sure the scientists will continue studying and debating this one.

Alaska's The Latest Place To Get "Baked" By A Record Heat Wave

People cool off in a lake near Wasila, Alaska during this
record breaking heat wave. Photo by Mark Thiessen/AP

If you like cool summer weather, Anchorage, Alaska is your kind of place.

Normal highs there this time of year are in the mid-60s and lows generally get to the low 50s.

Except this week. Parts of Alaska are having what might turn out to be an unprecedented heat wave, joining a long list of other places to have previously unheard of type heat waves.

Until yesterday the highest temperature on record for any date in Anchorage, Alaska was 85 degrees.  On this year's Fourth of July, Anchorage reached 90 degrees.

To break an all time record by five degrees is really something.  Heat waves - at least some of them - have gotten more extreme in recent years, and this is another example.  It's rare to break an all time record high, and much more rare to break it by such a big margin. And just last month parts of Europe broke record highs by similarly odd, large margins.

For perspective, it was hotter in Anchorage on the Fourth of July than it was in Little Rock, Arkansas and Key West, Florida, though it was more humid in Arkansas and Florida than in Alaska.

It's going to stay hot in much of Alaska for the next week or so, and it's already been off the charts for a week.

The seven-day period ending on Wednesday in Anchorage was the hottest such period on record, with a 67.4 degree average temperature. And that was before the real heat set in yesterday for a what will probably be a week long stay.

Other Alaskan places are hot, too. King Salmon and Kenai, Alaska broke or tied all time high temperature records at 88 degrees. Kodiak, Alaska just had its hottest July day on record, with a reading of 83 degrees. Northway, Alaska hit an all-time high of 92 degrees on June 30.

Last month was the warmest June on record in Anchorage, with a mean temperature of 60.5 degrees. That beat the old record set in 2015 by a whole degree. And talk about the longevity of the southern Alaska warmth! Each of the past 16 months have been warmer than average.

June in Anchorage was also the driest on record, with just 0.06 inches of rain. For perspective, a one-hour rainfall of that magnitude would barely make the pavement wet.

As can imagine, the odd warmth and dryness has been causing lots of problems. Overall, the current young wildfire season in Alaska is only slightly worse than average, but the fires could really get out of hand with the upcoming week of hot, dry weather and lightning strikes.

Plus, the Anchorage area is usually on the moist side, but not this year. So wildfires and the resulting air pollution is hanging around that city much more than usual.

It's not just the air that's hot. Relatively speaking so are many of the oceans and seas along the coast of Alaska.  The northern Bering and southern Chukchi sea water temperatures are as much as 10 degrees warmer than normal. 

The hot water is screwing up fisheries. Also, lots of dead seals are appearing on Alaska's northern and western shores. It's a mess.

The Alaska heat has so far only made occasional forays into central and northern Alaska. June in Utqiagvik, formerly Barrow on the northern tip of Alaska was only a modest 1.4 degrees warmer than normal, but did feature one day that hit 73 degrees, the warmest June reading on record there.

Fairbanks, in central Alaska, definitely had above normal temperatures in June, but it didn't break records. Temperatures in Fairbanks are expected to reach the 80s over the next week to ten days, which is about 10 degrees hotter than normal for this time of year.

The Alaska heat wave was created by a very unusually strong and far north ridge of high pressure parked over the state. It's a similar setup to what caused the record European heat wave last month.

Climate scientists keep tellling us these extreme heat waves are boosted by climate change. Perhaps these heat waves would have occured without climate change, but are being made more intense by all the CO2 we're pumping into the air.

Referencing the Europe heat wave, Columbia University climatologist James Hansen told CBS: "For all practical purposes, the heat wave is caused by human-made global warming."

I suspect the Alaska heat wave has climate change fingerprints all over it, too.

Skeptics point out, correctly, that the jet stream is wavy.  Immediately to the east of the European and Alaskan heat ridges were dips in the jet stream. Under these dips, temperatures were or are cooler than normal.

That's true. But the chilly weather in these jet stream dips wasn't record-breaking, or nearly as far from normal as the temperatures in the core of the heat waves.

Here in Vermont, we will very briefly get into this "dip" in the jet stream on Sunday, when high temperatures will "only" reach the mid and upper 70s. That's just few degrees cooler than normal, and nothing at all unusual for July.

While Vermont Stayed Wintry; Parts Of Arctic Incredibly Spring Balmy

Temperatures in northern Alaska are likely to be a whopping
35 to 50 degrees above normal this week. While temperatures
normally hover near 0 this time of year in that region,
readings are likely to get above freezing. 

It was another truly wintry morning around Vermont today. For the second day in a row, it was right around 9 below up in Island Pond. Lake Eden clocked in with 6 below.  Many Vermonters awoke to temperatures in the single digits above zero.

The good news for those who are winter-weary is that this will likely be the last time anyone in Vermont sees subzero temperatures until next November at the earliest.

The snow cover, deep in many areas, will begin to subside, starting today and continuing through the weekend amid thawing temperatures.

Despite the fact we will have a few wintry setbacks, spring is finally asserting itself in Vermont.

Meanwhile, it's been springlike up in parts of the Arctic all month. At least springlike by their standards. In parts of Alaska and northwestern Canada, this March will be far and away the warmest on record.

The ever-reliable Category 6 weather blog at Weather Underground has the rundown on this incredible Arctic "warmth."

Let's start with Utquiagvik, Alaska, formerly known as Barrow in the extreme northern tip of that state. The high temperature there yesterday was 32 degrees and the low, 17, which was almost exactly like the conditions we had here in Vermont on Tuesday. Seemingly not all that impressive.

But remember, this is the northern tip of Alaska. That 32 was record high for the date and Tuesday was 35 degrees warmer than normal in Utqiagvic. (Normal high there yesterday was minus 4, normal low, minus 17.

Utqiagvic is running 16 degrees above normal for March, and they are likely going to have the warmest March on record, and the first March with a mean temperature above zero, given the forecast of continued mild temperatures into early April.

It's not just Utqiagvic. Much of Alaska has been even hotter.  Kotzebue, Alaska, about 300 miles southwest to the former Barrow is having a March that will end more than 20 degrees warmer than average, and a record high. Thaws in Kotzebue are rare and brief in March, but each of the past five days there have gotten above freezing. (Normal high this time of year around Kotzebue is around 10 degrees).

There have been some incredible March record highs in Alaska, the Northwest Territories of Canada and far western Siberia. Sitka, Alaska,  reached 67 degrees this month.  Yohin Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada sits just 400 miles from the Arctic Circle and managed to hit an incredible 71 degrees a week or so back. At the hour it was that warm in Yohin Lake, it was a degree or two cooler than that in Miami, Florida.

Tofino, British Columbia reached 76 degrees, which is a March record and would have been the all-time hottest reading there in April, too.

The odd warmth in Alaska is due largely to an odd and strangely persistent weather pattern that has brought repeated bursts of air from the south to the region. Plus, the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet due to climate change.

Superimpose climate change on an odd, warm weather pattern and you really get some bizarre northern heat.

HOW IT AFFECTS US

If it seems this Arctic warmth is something that is happening too far away to affect many people and doesn't affect you at all, think again.

First of all, the lack of ice in the Bering Sea off western Alaska is having a wide range of effects. Ice usually prevents large storm waves from crashing ashore in western Alaska. With the lack of ice, the waves have been producing coastal flooding and erosion, notes the Anchorage Daily News. 

Nobody can go crabbing, fishing and walrus hunting either.

This weather pattern has certainly affected the United States. The big northward bulge in the jet stream has created a big dip downstream. That means cold air masses have been able to easily move south from Canada. Air that's really warm for the season north of the Arctic Circle is cold for the season by the time it heads south to places like, well, Vermont.

Which helps explain why the weather was basically the same yesterday in Vermont as it was way up in the northern tip of Alaska.

This warm Arctic spring is reason to worry about the extent of Arctic ice, too.

Overall, despite the tiny amounts of ice in the Bering Sea, overall Arctic ice extent did not set any record lows this winter, which is a good thing. The ice extent probably peaked around March 13 and it was tied for the seventh lowest in the past 40 years. Not a terrific thing, but at least the amounts of ice didn't crash this year.

This week, the odd heat has expanded to include almost all of the Arctic. This is almost certainly a temporary thing, but it does start off the melt season awfully fast. If the trend were to continue well into the summer, we'd be a risk of setting a new record for lowest ice extent.

That's just speculation at the moment, anything can happen with the pace of this year's melt. It all depends upon what the weather pattern is like when summer really hits in June, July and August.

But if the Arctic ice continues to diminish, it will help keep making the weather patterns weirder and more extreme in places where we live in the mid-latitudes.

GREENLAND GLACIER GROWS

A good example of how natural cycles are superimposed on a warming climate is at the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland.

The glacier became something of a poster child for climate change back in 2014, when it rapidly began to lose mass. It stunned people watching the climate, as glaciers like Jakobshavn, when they melt fast, contribute to sea level rise.

Well, guess what? The Jakobshavn glacier is growing again. Adding ice. So, no worries about climate change right?  A Greenland glacier is actually growing!

Not so fast.

In the short term, the fact that Jakobshavn glacier is growing is a very good thing. It's not contributing to sea level rise, and is in fact slowing it by an imperceptible amount.

The glacier stopped shrinking and started expanding again because an ocean current bringing water to the spot where the glacier meets the ocean got much chillier starting around 2016.  The water there is the coldest it's been since the 1980s, as Marshall Shepherd notes in Forbes.

There's a natural pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation that makes the North Atlantic flip between cold and warm once every five, ten, fifteen, twenty years - it depends.

It's in the cold phase, so that's helping the glacier grow. Which leads Shepherd to a great point in his Forbes article.  People who deny or are skeptical of climate change often say the climate changes naturally.

Climate scientist would respond by saying, Duh!  They all already know climate changes naturally. always changes.  As Shepherd writes:

"It's not 'either/or' with naturally-varying climate and human influences. it's 'and.''

Which is what we're seeing now with the Jakobshavn glacier, and the odd heat in Alaska.

Chances are, when the North Atlantic Oscillation flips again, that Jakobshavn glacier will begin to thaw again.

Will This Autumn's Baked Alaska Gives Us Vermonters A Frigid Winter?

Will a weird autumn Alaska heat wave give us Vermonters a frigid
winter? It's possible. This photo shows a frigid January day in 2015,
in St. Albans, Vermont, the last time a warm northeastern
Pacific Ocean influenced the weather, It was really cold here.. 

There are all sorts of predictions for what this winter will be like, ranging from warm and dry to frigid and snowy and everything in between.

It's always hard to forecast a winter. It's even tougher this year, with a weak El Nino possibly influencing things, and weather patterns in the Arctic still making up their minds

One intriguing clue to this winter is the return of "The Blob."  

No, it's not a horror movie. But for those who don't like frigid winters, it could be somewhat horrible.

Here's what I'm trying to explain: There's been a huge and persistent and warm ridge of high pressure over and near Alaska throughout this autumn. This has caused record warmth across that region. An autumn Baked Alaska.

Fairbanks, Alaska has yet to see so much as a flake of snow so far this year. That's by far a record for the latest first snow. Nome, Alaska should have had about 20 freezes so far this autumn. This year, they've had one. So far this month, Anchorage is running ten degrees warmer than normal.

This warm high pressure system has heated up the northeastern Pacific Ocean. This area of toasty water has come to be known as The Blob. As the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang points out, this can really chill us in the eastern United States.

The Blob last made an appearance in the winters of 2013-14 and 2014-15. You remember the talk of "Polar Vortexes" those winters, and how cold it was over Vermont and the rest of the Northeast. The winter of 2015 was also when Boston had its epic snow siege. 

Those extreme winters were created in part by "The Blob."  The warm northeastern Pacific Ocean forced the jet stream over western North America northward. That caused a big dip in the jet stream downstream, over the eastern United States. That led to repeated Arctic outbreaks in the winters of 2014 and 2015.  It also led to the hottest year on record in the Pacific Northwest, under that warm ridge.

Snow siege in Boston, Massachusetts, 2015. Warm northeastern
Pacific Ocean water helped cause an intense winter in
the Northeast. Photo by Charles Krupa/AP

The Capital Weather Gang assures us The Blob might not hang on like it did in the winters of 2014 and 2015. In 2016, it looked like The Blob was reasserting itself, but it dissipated. This year, the huge warm high pressure ridge over Alaska is showing signs of breaking down.

If it does break down and stay broken down, that will open the door to big Pacific Ocean storms. The storms will mix up the water in The Blob zone, bringing cold water up from down below. The warm blob will disappear and no longer be a factor in our winter.

There's no way to tell for sure whether this will happen or not. It's just one piece of the puzzle for a complicated winter forecast.

For the next week here in Vermont, it will sure be wintry. Temperatures will stay 10 to 15 degrees below normal most days, and the threat of snow showers will be almost ever-present, especially in the high elevations.

Beyond that, who knows?

Somewhat Wintry, But At Least The Extreme Weather Is Gone, For Now

Just a small section of an enormous ice jam along the
Missisquoi River in Swanton, Vermont Sunday. Only
light snowfalls and moderating temperatures this week
mean the situation at least probably won't get much worse,
but rain early next week could complicate things. 

Here in Vermont and the rest of New England, we can look forward to a week that, at least, won't have super extreme weather.

Oh sure, it will be wintry, and some areas might get a moderate snowstorm, but that's par for the course for January.

The bar is set low. If we can get through a few days without something bizarre happening in the weather, we can take that as a plus.

You probably noticed you woke up to another cold morning. Most of the North Country was below zero this morning, with Saranac Lake clocking in at 24 below as of 5 a.m.

This isn't as cold as the weather we had at the beginning of the month, so take heart in that. Also, this morning is the chilliest weather you'll see in more than a week, at least, so that's good too.

An Alberta clipper type storm is heading in from the west. It's destined to cause a widespread area of snow, with ice and sleet to the south, covering an area from the Great Lakes to Texas to New England.

Few places in this vast area will get enormous accumulations, but in the South it doesn't take much to create real headaches. Winter storm watches and warnings are up for parts of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama because of this.

The clipper will weaken as it heads east, transferring its energy to a nor'easter that will develop off the Northeast Coast.

"Nor'easter" strikes fear into the hearts of some, but don't worry, this one isn't going to be the epically big "bomb cyclone" or whatever you want to call the huge type of storm that hit back on January 4.

This one will be more benign. Winter storm watches are up for far southern Vermont and much of Massachusetts because of this one late Tuesday and Wednesday and those watches might be expanded elsewhere in eastern New England.

But this will be a low-end winter storm. Right now, the most affected areas will probably get on the order of four to eight inches of powder. No big deal.

Elsewhere in Vermont, the southern and eastern half of the state could pick up a few inches of snow from this, while the northwest only gets light accumulations.

You'll notice a definite warming trend this week, too. While it's snowing off and on Tuesday and Wednesday, daytime highs will get into the comfortable mid and upper 20s, while nights only get down into the so-so teens.

It'll keep warming up, and it looks like another thaw will be here by next weekend. It won't be 60 degrees again like it was Friday. At least for Saturday and Sunday, there will be little precipitation, too, so that's good for the ice jams that are still plaguing the area.

However, forecasters are watching a storm that could hit Sunday  night and next Monday, which could bring rain. That, in turn, might aggravate any of the ice jam problems that are still lingering across the region.

It's too early to guess how much rain or other precipitation we might get, but it's something to watch out for.

Another note: While the weather won't go off the rails around here, there are some extremes of note elsewhere. One thing that caught my eye happened in Alaska Sunday. They're having a remarkably warm (for them) winter. On Sunday, a weather station in Metlakatia, Alaska, recorded a temperature of 66 degrees (above zero!) marking the hottest January temperature on record anywhere in Alaska.

The town of Sitka, Alaska, reached 62 degrees Sunday, its hottest January temperature on record. These readings were in southern Alaska. While there was no record heat in northern Alaska, the tippy top northern part of the state was still nearly 20 degrees warmer than average and toastier than Vermont was on Sunday.

California Wildfires, Unbelievably For December, Still Raging. Baked Alaska, Too

A home burns in northern San Diego County, California
earlier this week as flames continue to spread through
the region. In December! 

The wildfires this month in California aren't at the top of the headlines as much anymore, but they are still raging, which is incredible for December, which is supposed to be well within the state's rainy season.

Judging from the southern California weather forecasts for the next few days, the fires might leap back into homes, and the front pages of newspapers and home pages of news web sites.

It remains bone dry in Southern California. No rain is in sight, at least until after Christmas. Offshore winds blowing in from the east are keeping the relative humidity extremely low. And the Santa Ana winds are resurgent, blowing strong again today. They'll continue to gust off and on through Saturday, and could pick up to become very, very dangerous again on Sunday.

The Thomas Fire, the one that burned hundreds of homes in and around Ventura, California once it started on December 4 continues to burn with no end in sight.  It is 30 percent contained, but who knows if it will break fire lines in this weather? Plus, there's a high risk that new fires could break out, even if a fire in northern San Diego County that destroyed 157 homes is largely contained. So is the one in BelAir.

As Reuters reports, the Thomas Fire is California's fifth largest wildfire on record. It has destroyed more than 700 homes, traveled 27 miles and charred 371 square miles, an area larger than New York City. The fire continues to spread, and belch choking smoke through the region. That continues to raise health concerns.

That we are still talking about dangerous wildfire conditions across southern California heading into Christmas is just incredible. Santa Ana winds do still blow fairly frequently in this region in December and even January, but by now, it has normally rained so much that the winds don't spark any major fires. At this time of year, southern Californians should be worried about heavy rains and mudslides, not wildfires.

Not this time.

This wildfire bizarro world in California is not entirely caused by climate change, but climate change has its fingerprints all over the situation. We're in a La Nina weather pattern, which does favor dryness in the Southwest. La Ninas come and go with or without climate change, so there's that.

People also keep building more and more houses in areas that are fire prone, so as long as that trend continues, wildfires will get more and more destructive, with or without climate change.

But the persistence of the dryness and accompanying intense warmth for this time of year is a hallmark of climate change. As the Los Angeles Times reports, California Governor Jerry Brown said climate change has brought his state into a new normal, one in which out of season wildfires like the current ones are becoming more common. He says the situation will worsen, saying that climate change has us "on the road to hell."

Southern California isn't the only place that has gotten weird, unprecedented December wildfires. A wildfire earlier this week in and near Custer State Park, not far from Rapid City, South Dakota, forced evacuations.

A bit odd for a northern state like South Dakota in December, don't you think?

Then let's look at Alaska recently. Nope, no wildfires going on there at the moment. But Anchorage earlier this week had four consecutive days with highs of 45 degrees or more, the first time that's happened in December. In the southeastern Alaska town of Sitka, the overnight low temperture was 53 degrees on December 7. That was one degree warmer than the record high temperature for the date.

Each day since December 3 in normally ultra frigid Fairbanks, Alaska has been at least 18 degrees above normal. November in Barrow, on the northern tip of Alaska, was a whopping 16.4 degrees warmer than normal, by far a record. There's still open water on the northwest coast of Alaska. It should have been locked in frozen well before now.

A weather pattern that makes winter weather unusually warm in Alaska usually means frigid weather in the eastern United States, including here in Vermont. Yes, it's been cold the past couple of days, with temperatures around zero this morning.

However, zero degrees in a Vermont December is nothing unusual. And overall temperatures so far this December are so far running near normal. The weather pattern since the beginning of the month should have kept us well below normal.

This blog post turned into a climate change rant, I get it. But I think it's something we all must get off our chests now and then. It's that important.

Hot Times In Barrow Alaska. (At Least By Their Standards)

Barrow, on the northern tip of Alaska is not the place for you if you like basking in tropical warmth.

It's easily the coldest city in the United States, and this time of year, normal highs are near 10 degrees, with readings a little below zero at night.

Barrow, Alaska, shown here in a summertime photo a
couple years back, is having a record warm autumn
at least by their standards.  

Back in October, when we Vermonters usually bask in temperatures up in the 50s and 60s amid fall foliage, it's usually winter already in Barrow. Normal daily high temperatures are usually below freezing by mid-October in Barrow.  

But by those chilly standards, Barrow has been a tropical paradise this autumn.

October's average temperature up there was 30.1 degrees, the hottest on record and a whopping 12.9 degrees toastier than normal.  It got up to 44 degrees on October 10 up there. Chilly for us, beach weather for them.

The warmth has continued into November. Instead of the usual high/low of 10 and a little below zero, daytime temperatures have been in the mid 20s to low 30s this month.

Part of the reason Barrow has been so warm has been a serious lack of sea ice in the Arctic. When there's open ocean, relatively warm water can evaporate into the air. When it's frozen, it's frozen, no "heat" escapes from the water. It's sealed off by ice.

Barrow is not the only place that's been so warm lately in the Great White North, though in a few places up there it still isn't so white.

The western and northwestern shores of Hudson Bay have reached the upper 50s in recent days, in a zone that is normally constantly below freezing this time of year.

Hudson Bay is usually freezing up by this time of year, but it's largely ice free at the moment.

This northern warmth will have a bit of a factor in our weather here in New England late this week and into Saturday.

We're due for a shot of cold air from the source region of central Canada, where temperatures are so much warmer than average. That means the cold shot coming our way won't be as cold as you'd expet in the weather pattern that is expected to set up at the end of the week.

Instead of our own early season bout of subfreezing afternoons, it will be seasonably cold, with highs in the upper 30s, with just scattered wet snow showers. No big deal for November.



 were basking in fall foliage and temperature

Arctic Heat And Melting Ice Just Keep Getting Worse And Worse

Click on this chart to make it bigger and easier
to see. The black line is the trend in
Arctic sea ic this year. The red line represents
the record low year of 2012. The gray shading
is pretty much the longterm average 

It seems every time we glimpse up toward the Arctic this year, things just keep getting more and more dire.

The ice is melting faster and earlier than ever before as the increasing warmth of spring grinds on. Temperatures are staying way above normal and are forecast to continue doing so.

Worse, strong, warm high pressure is parked over parts of the high Arctic, which means lots of toasty sunshine to accelerate ice melt.

I know what you're thinking. Who cares about a balmy Arctic spring?

My reply is the same as I've offered before. A warm, melting Arctic can screw up your life. Yes, the life you lead thousands of miles south of the Arctic.

First of all, the less ice there is, the less heat gets reflected back to space. Less ice means the oceans and earth can absorb more heat, worsening global warming.

This is known as positive feedback. Global warming melts ice. The lack of ice makes global warming worse. That melts even more ice. And so on and so on.

The Arctic melt also screws up coastal cities over the long term. The ice melting in the Arctic Ocean isn't that big a deal when thinking of sea level rise. It's like an ice cube melting in a glass. The glass won't overflow when the ice melts.

However, the ice melting off Greenland IS a big deal. That is like a melting ice cube held above the glass of water. Eventually the dripping of water from the melting ice cube into the glass will make that glass overflow.

Water flowing off Greenland from the excessive melts are slowly making the world's oceans "overflow"

On top of that, the jet stream depends largely on a sharp temperature contrast between the equatorial regions and the poles. The jet stream controls the strength, position and movement of most storms and areas of fair weather high pressure - the weather in general.

The Arctic is warming up much more rapidly than places near the Equator. That means there's less of a temperature contrast. Which could mean a weaker or weirder jet stream. Whichwould make weather systems or patterns get "stuck" in place more often.

That, in turn, would lead to longer and more intense heat waves, droughts, floods or even cold waves, depending on where and how the jet stream gets "stuck."

So yeah, worry about a warming Arctic.

Here are some recent details of what's going on up there:

ARCTIC HEAT WAVES

Researchers with NOAA said Barrow, on Alaska's northern tip, had by far its earliest date at which the snow cover melted away in the spring.

The snow was gone at Barrow by May 13, a full 10 days earlier than the previous record.

Meanwhile, the town of Longyearbyen, in the northern tip of Norway - the northernmost civilian community in the world, has had only one cooler than average day so far this year, which is unheard of, notes Bob Henson in a recent Weather Underground post. 

Also, as I noted previously, parts of Greenland in April had its earliest thaw on record. Ominously, there have been more thaws since. We'll see if Greenland has a hot (for them) summer. It would be bad if they did.

(See sea level rise, above)

NO ICE, ICE, BABY

Arctic sea ice is still melting at a record fast pace this spring, as Bob Henson notes in his Weather Underground blog.

The melt is so far going at a far faster pace than the record 2012 melt.

Satellite pictures are showing major cracks and openings in Arctic ice. These cracks, called leads, always happen later during the summer in the Arctic, but never in May.;

Until this year.

"It looks like late June or early July right now," says David Douglas, a research biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey

Scientists are marveling - not in a good way -- about the melting ice.

"We're in record breaking territory no matter how you look at it," Jennifer Francis told the Washington Post recently.

Francis, an Arctic specialist at Rutgers University, studies how changes in the Arctic affect weather patterns in the mid-latitudes were most of us live.

"The ice is really low, the temperatures are really high, the fire seasons have started early," Francis said.

Wildlife such as polar bears and walruses are suffering, too. They need ice to hunt for food, and it's literally disappearing under their feet.

Though things are off to an ominous start, there's no guarantee this year will break a record for least Arctic ice. If it's relatively cloudy in the Arctic during June and July, and if air and ocean circulation patterns assist in pushing ice toward somewhat lower latitudes,  the Arctic sea ice melt might slow down dramatically, as Henson notes. 

WILDFIRES:

Remember that big wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada at the beginning of this month?

Well, it's still burning, big time, with no signs of containment. Most of the fire has moved away from Fort McMurray, but it now covers an area bigger than Rhode Island and is moving into neighboring provinces.  

The fire probably won't go out until the snow flies in the autumn.

Global warming might have contributed tot he giant
Fort McMurray fire in Canada. The fire, in turn, might
help make global warming a little worse.  

This is bad for a lot of reasons, besides the fact that a bunch of trees just went up in smoke and more are going every day.

We've seen smoke from this fire a couple times this month now all the way down here in Vermont. It makes the sky hazy,

That's soot. It's not great for the lungs. But worse, the wind sometimes blows the soot over and onto the Arctic Ocean and onto the Greenland ice cap.

The soot particles are dark, and when they settle on ice, the dark soot attracts the sun's heat, accelerating melting. If the ice had stayed white, a lot of the sun's heat would have been reflected back into space, so the melting would be slower.

Also, the Fort McMurray fire is burning through boreal forests that have permafrost under the soil's surface.

Normally, the forests and vegetation shade the permafrost, so it stays, well, frosty.  The fires get rid of that protective vegetation and leave charred black stuff in its wake.

That means the sun can get down and melt the permafrost. When that happens, tons of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, gets released into the air, worsening global warming.

More positive feedback, like that ice melting in the Arctic Ocean.

So yeah, I hope the few people that live in the Arctic regions are enjoying their warm year. They're probably not. They're worried instead.

We down here in the "South" should be worried, too.

Alaska's Aleutian Islands Slammed By Near Record Strong Storm

Beautiful visible satellite photo of a massive storm this
weekend near Alaska's Aleutian Islands.
Photo from the Japan Meteorological Agency.  

Winter in the Northern Hemisphere is the season of strong, windy, snowy storms, as most of us know.

In the Aleutian Islands, that chain of islands that extends from Alaska westward into the North Pacific  toward Russia, the storms tend to make even the biggest ones we experience in the Lower 48 just trifles of breezes and flurries.

One of the strongest Aleutian storms was raging Sunday morning. In the community of Adak, winds at midnight were sustained at 95 mph gusting to 123 mph. Sustained winds of over hurricane force were almost continuous for at least five hours overnight.

I've never seen a reporting weather station show such incredible winds except in the heart of some of the strongest late summer and early autumn hurricanes coming ashore.  Those gusts are also about the same as the highest gusts on record for Adak, which is 125 mph

The cause of Adak's winds, and a wide area of blizzards and destructive winds in southwestern Alaska, is a storm system that might set records for the lowest barometric pressure observed in the region.

Atmospheric pressure is a good measure of how strong a storm is. The lower the pressure, the stronger the storm, at least almost all the time.

According to Accuweather, the storm Sunday morning had a central pressure of 924 millibars or 27.29 inches of mercury, tying the record for the lowest air pressure in an Alaskan storm on record.

The storm could strengthen a little bit more during the day Sunday.

For comparison's sake, a really bad nor'easter in New England might have a central pressure of 28.70 inches, and normal, boring weather would have us at about 30.00 inches of mercury.

It's almost always a bad idea to take a boat trip in the Bering Sea, but really so today, considering the hurricane force winds and 40 foot tall waves.

The impacts on mainland Alaska from this storm won't be as bad, since it's so far offshore, but still, blizzard conditions are expected in southwestern Alaska.

This storm won't have much of an impact on the Lower 48 but of course the continental United States is dealing with winter storms in the Rockies, flooding in the central Plains, and conditions on the East Coast ranging from record heat in the Mid-Atlantic to a winter storm watch for heavy icing and snow in northern Maine.

Alaska Is Kinda, Almost Getting A Hurricane

Click on this map to make it bigger and easier to see.
This shows the paths of hurricanes and tropical storms
that made it unusually far north in the Pacific.
Yellow parts of tracks indicate it was at hurricane status
green is tropical storm strength. From Dr. Jeff Masters'
Weather Underground blog.  

A hurricane this week managed to sneak much further into the northeastern Pacific Ocean than is normal, which means Alaska and British Columbia are in for a mean, mean storm later today and tonight.

Hurricane Oho cruised through the central Pacific and headed north during this past week.

Usually, hurricanes die out or turn into regular old storms well before approaching Alaska or other points in North America.

Oho indeed stopped being a hurricane and turned into a regular mid-latitude storm, but did so much further north than almost every hurricane in recorded history.

This, and the fact that the remnants of Oho are going to interact with a strong jet stream, mean winds to near hurricane force might hit some coastal sections of Alaska's panhandle.

Hurricanes need very warm water to survive, and the Pacific Ocean off the coast of North America, even off the coast of far southern California, is normally way to chilly to support tropical systems.

However, northeastern Pacific Ocean temperatures are at or near record high levels, so many hurricanes that manages to move north would hang on to their tropical characteristics longer than they otherwise would.

According to Dr. Jeff Masters in his Weather Underground blog, only two other hurricanes since 1949 - an unnamed storm in 1975 and Hurricane Ana last year got as far north as Oho.

Ana also took advantage of record hot water in the Pacific to latitude 36.3 North, which is about as far north as Monterrey, California. The 1975 hurricane made it as far north as the Washington/Oregon border, but like Ana and Oho, was well offshore at that time.

Both Ana and Oho remained potent and dangerous storms, though no longer hurricanes, when the hit the coast of North America.

Masters says another tropical system is forming in the eastern Pacific, and this one, too, has the potential to get much further north than most hurricanes off of the West Coast.

More Extreme Weather Videos

This car was crushed by a tornado this morning
in Ciudad Acuna, near Del Rio, Texas.  

It's another day of stormy weather across the southern Plains today.

A particularly nasty batch of storms spewing hail, high winds, tornadoes and flash floods got going over western Texas this morning.

As of noon, the storms were gaining strength, size and coverage, meaning much of central and eastern Texas is in for a trying day today. As if the last several weeks of tornadoes and floods weren't enough.

There's already been a report of a 76 mph wind gust around Abilene, Texas earlier today.

Demonstrating how potentially dangerous this weather system is, a tornado roared through Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, just across the border from Del Rio, Texas earlier this morning.

Reports are that 10 people died in the Ciduda Acuna tornado.

The tornado lifted before it reached Del Rio, but that city still got high winds and flash flooding out of the deal.

Huge hailstones in Romania today. 

Violent and unusual weather has been hitting wide areas of the world in the past week. Today, a supercell thunderstorm dumped tennis ball sized  hail on parts of Romania. Serbia is experiencing dangerous flash floods.

Record heat has hit parts of Alaska and northwestern Canada. Eagle, Alaska, some 200 miles east of Fairbanks, had six days in a row with temperatures in the 80s last week.  It was 47 degrees on May 21 in Barrow, on Alaska's northern tip.

That doesn't seem like much, but that is by far the warmest it has been there for so early in the season. The unusual and persistent heat up that way is aggravating early ice melt in the Arctic this year.

In Turkey a few days ago, massive flash floods swept away cars, buildings and people. Have a look in this video:




For proof that Texas has gotten way too much severe weather, here's footage from StormChasingVieo.com of hail piling up to a foot or more deep in Pecos, Texas back on May 18.

The hail was so deep that the bottom of low clearance cars were scraping the accumulation and getting stuck. It looks like the worst of winter driving, but it was springtime hail. Watch:

Let's Go Skiing In Algeria! Cold Now In Odd Places

Snow in Algeria this week. Photo by
@Ovardaigbal on Twitter.  

As noted yesterday, there's snow and cold in the normally hot southwestern United States deserts and near Las Vegas.

That's not the only place that is having frigid weather amid the palm trees. There was a bunch of snow around the Mediterranean over the past couple days, including a nice snowy covering in what is normally the sandy dusty reaches of Algeria in northern Africa.

Snow does occasionally reach lower elevations in Algeria, the last two times before this in 2012 and 2005.

It also snowed quite a bit this week in far southern Italy, where again, snow is a rarity.

If you want warmth, head north. Scandanavia was generally warmer than Algeria yesterday, which is saying something.

A big ridge of in the jet stream pumped unusually warm air into northwestern Europe, which explains the Scandanavian warmth.

Much of Europe is coming off its hottest year on record, so the thaw up toward Norway is a fitting end to 2014.

Head north to Alaska, too, if you like relative warmth. Delta Junction, Alaska tied a record high of 44 degrees yesterday.

It was 30 degrees in Fairbanks yesterday, which doesn't seem particularly warm, but it was 27 degrees warmer than normal for this time of year and just missed the record high by five degrees.

Snow covered palms in Lake Havasu City, Arizona today.
Photo via Twitter, @Lklettenberg.  

And Anchorage, Alaska is finishing up 2014 with above zero readings.

This will be the first calendar year on record in Anchorage where the temperature never fell below zero.

By contrast, it got below zero 18 times near me in Burlington, Vermont this year. (all in January, February and March)

Even St. Louis, Missouri, zillions of miles south of Anchorage, was below zero more often than Anchorage. St. Louis had four subzero days in 2014, in January and February

Today, two cities, Needles, California and Lake Havasu City, Arizona had snow.

If you've heard of these two communities before, it's because they are very often the hottest spot in the nation on many days. Temperatures in Needles and Lake Havasu City can get up into the 120s (!!) in the summer.

The Havasu News-Herald said it's the first time it has snowed there in 27 years.

So I'm sure the snow today was quite a shock.

But not as shocking as in Wyoming, where one town got down to 48 below. That's not including the wind chill.

Time to go get a hot chocolate, I think.

"Bomb" Explodes Off Coast Of Alaska; Fallout Starting to Affect U.S. (Cold, Snow)

Satellite view of the record breaking intense
storm over the Bering Sea.  

An enormous bomb exploded in the Bering Sea in the past couple of days, in that space of stormy ocean between Alaska and Russia.

Don't worry, the bomb wasn't Russia and Vladimir Putin finally getting to annoyed with the United States that he wants to start a war with us. Putin's still busy in the Ukraine.

This bomb was meteorological, a storm that development wicked fast and became arguably the strongest storm on record in the far northern Pacific Ocean. (The Bering Sea is part of the Pacific Ocean.)

Meteorologists really do call some storms bombs. For the precise science geeks out there, a bomb is a storm whose air pressure falls by 24 millibars within 24 hours.

For the people out there who don't dwell on things like millibars, suffice it to say that a bomb is a storm that goes really quickly from nothing special to a real monster of a blow.

Back to those millibars for a minute. The air pressure at the center of the storm late Friday night and early Saturday morning local time bottomed out at 924 millibars, the strongest yet measured on record in the Bering Sea, says weather historian Christopher Burt. 

Of  course, it's hard to precisely measure storms out in the ocean, and it used to be much harder in the days before satellites and that sort of thing, so there might have been stronger storms in the Bering Sea in the past.

In general, the lower the air pressure in a storm, the stronger the storm is.  For comparison's sake, the air pressure in Burlington, Vermont Sunday morning, with near normal weather condition, no particular storms or high pressure systems in the area, was 1009 millibars.

This map, via David Hulen on Twitter, show
no cargo ships in the red circle, where the
intense storm is. The yellow circle shows
cargo ships near Alaska waiting for the
storm to move or dissipate before they
head out on their journey.  

Superstorm Sandy in 2012 had a central pressure of 946 millibars when it made landfall in New Jersey, the second lowest air pressure of any storm that hit the East Coast north of Cape Hatteras. (The Great Long Island Hurricane of 1938 is Number 1)

We all know what a huge mess that was.

The huge storm in the Bering Sea might be in the Pacific ocean, but there is nothing pacific under this monster system.

There were forecasts of 50 foot waves, though none that high have officially been measured yet. Winds no doubt reached hurricane force.

Luckily, not a lot of people live in coastal areas near the storm, so it's not causing widespread destruction.

So why should we care about a big bad storm directly affecting not that many people?  First of all, it's cool. It's a record-breaking storm, for gawd's sake.

Second of all, this big storm will affect you if you're living anywhere in the eastern half of the United States.

No, hurricane force winds and 50 foot waves are not going to hit your house, so relax.  But as I pointed out the other day, this storm is affecting the jet stream, causing a big ridge of high pressure in western North America, which in turn is causing a big southward dip in the jet stream to form in the eastern halves of Canada and the United States.

When that happens, we get big cold spells. Starting now in the Northern Plains and by midweek or so on the East Coast, it's going to turn wintry cold and stay that way for awhile.

Winter storm warnings are flying from eastern Montana, through parts of the Dakotas, into Minnesota, including Minneapolis and northern Wisconsin as a storm rides along the cold front bringing the chill.

Temperatures in parts of Montana are expected to fall into the teens below zero this week, with wind chills making things feel much colder.

It still looks like most of the eastern half of the United States is going to stay colder than normal for the most part for at least two or three weeks, maybe longer.

We have, in part, the big bomb that went off in the Bering Sea to thank for our early winter.