Coldest summer ever in Anchorage?

[tropicana]

COLDEST SUMMER EVER?
Anchorage, Alaska
Thu Jul 24 2008
The coldest summer ever? You might be looking at it, weather folks say.
Right now the so-called summer of '08 is on pace to produce the fewest days ever recorded in which the temperature in Anchorage managed to reach 65 degrees.

That unhappy record was set in 1970, when we only made it to the 65-degree mark, which many Alaskans consider a nice temperature, 16 days out of 365.
This year, however -- with the summer more than half over -- there have been only seven 65-degree days so far. And that's with just a month of potential "balmy" days remaining and the forecast looking gloomy.

The outlook is for Anchorage to remain cool and cloudy through the rest of July. There's no real warm feature moving in. And that's just been the pattern Anchorage has been stuck in for a couple weeks now.

In the Matanuska Valley on Wednesday snow dusted the Chugach. On the Kenai Peninsula, rain was raising Six-Mile River to flood levels and rafting trips had to be canceled.
So if the cold and drizzle are going to continue anyway, why not shoot for a record? The mark is well within reach. It's probably going to go down as the summer with the least number of 65-degree days.

MEASURING THE MISERY

In terms of "coldest summer ever," however, a better measure might be the number of days Anchorage fails to even reach 60.
There too, 2008 is a contender, having so far notched only 35 such days -- far below the summer-long average of 88.
Unless we get 10 more days of 60-degree or warmer temperatures, we're going to break the dismal 1971 record of only 46 such days, a possibility too awful to contemplate.
Still, according to a series of charts cobbled together Tuesday evening by a night-shift meteorologist in the weather service's Anchorage office, the current summer clearly has broken company with the record-setting warmth of recent years. Consider:

• 70-degree days. So far this summer there have been two. Usually there are 15. Last year there were 21. In 2004 there were 49.

• 75-degree days. So far this summer there've been zero. Usually there are four. It may be hard to remember, but last year there were 21. In 2004 there were 23.

So are all bets off on global warming? Hardly, scientists say. Climate change is a function of long-term trends, not single summers or individual hurricanes.

Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that it's "unequivocal" the world is warming, considering how 11 of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past 13 years.
So what's going on in Alaska, which also posted a fairly frigid winter?

LA NINA
Federal meteorologists trace a lot of the cool weather to ocean temperatures in the South Pacific.
When the seas off the coast of Peru are 2 to 4 degrees cooler than normal, a La Nina weather pattern develops, which brings cooler-than- normal weather to Alaska.
For most of the past year, La Nina (the opposite of El Nino, in which warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures occur off Peru) has prevailed. But that's now beginning to change.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Web site, water temperatures in the eastern South Pacific began to warm this summer -- and the weather should eventually follow.

The current three-month outlook posted by the national Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md., calls for below-normal temperatures for the south coast of Alaska from August through October -- turning to above-normal temperatures from October through December.

[Cyclone1]

Someone email this to Al Gore. :P

[vbhoutex]

Someone email this to Al Gore.

Took the words right off the fingertips of my hand!!!

[PurdueWx80]

did you two miss this part -

"So are all bets off on global warming? Hardly, scientists say. Climate change is a function of long-term trends, not single summers or individual hurricanes"?

[Squarethecircle]

Someone email this to Al Gore.

Although I'm sure he would appreciate it, I don't see Al Gore, or, quite frankly, anyone who isn't a GW or anti-GW extremist (or, of course, people who live in Anchorage) actually caring too much about this story. I mean, the summer was cold, whoopee!

(Note: If you think (although I wouldn't personally know what you think) Al Gore is a GW extremist, then you need to step into the real world. There are people who will commit acts of violence if they see someone putting a plastic bottle into a trash can when there's a recycling bin within driving distance.)

[Ed Mahmoud]

I probably couldn't live in Denver, just due to itchy, dry skin and constant static shocks when I was there for a few days years ago for a job interview.


They pay people to live in Alaska, if I understand.


We'll know one way or the other in twenty or thirty years. Either GW isn't real, and we'll have crippled our economy, doomed millions of the poorest to eternal poverty, and probably given potential rival China an insurmountable strategic advantage, or it is real, we won't have done enough, coastal cities will flood, Pacific Islanders will become refugees, Siberia will become the new grainbasket for the world, and the polar bears really will die off.


That is the advantage of being a pessimist. It is hard to be disappointed.


I strongly lean toward the former, partly because the hostility that many of the GW believers react with to questioning makes me wonder why they seem to scorn legitimate debate, but I'm not absolutely certain they are wrong.


A little global warming, just a tad, would be ok with me. My oranges seem somewhat freeze tolerant, but I have lost lemons and avocadoes in the freezes that happened around the December 2004 Christmas Eve snow miracle. (12/24/04 is the reason why I never completely reject the 336 hour 6Z GFS when it shows sub 540 dm thicknesses and precip for Southeast Texas). Of course, what is good for the lemons, would be bad for more White Christmas events in Texas.

[Tstormwatcher]

I would take the cool Alaska weather over the hot and humid weather we get every summer.

[MGC]

Al Gore is too busy making millions pushing his BSGW agenda on the rest of us rational and sane Americans.....MGC

[Stephanie]

I thought GW also produced weather extremes. Last year, I believe, Alaska was facing one of the warmest summers on record;

Here is a blog regarding Fairbank's weather "Year in Review - 2007";

http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/News/2008/Review07.html

A nice long summer and continued low snowfall for 2007
2007 Statistics

Mean Annual Temperature -27.6°F
Departure from Normal +0.9°F
Highest Temperature -83°F (20 Jul)
Lowest Temperature -44°F (9 Jan)
Total Precipitation -11.35 inches
Departure from Normal +1.01 inches
Maximum 24hr Precipitation -0.85 inches (22 Jul)
Total Snowfall -33.5 inches
Departure from Normal -34.5 inches
Maximum 24hr Snowfall -4.6 inches (19 Oct)
New Record Highs / Lows -2 / 0
Highs Above 80°F -9 days
Lows Below -40°F -7 days
Heating Degree Days -13598

A long cold spell to begin spring, a beautiful long and warm, but not hot, summer with ample rainfall, and a meager start to the 2007-08 snow season. These were some of the weather highlights in Fairbanks for 2007. Overall, the year was just a bit warmer than normal with a mean annual temperature of 27.9°F, almost 1°F above average. Accordingly, the annual heating degree day total was about 380 units below average with 13598 units. Precipitation totaled about an inch more than normal with 11.35 inches for the year, though snowfall was only half of the normal 68 inches with 33.5 for the calendar year.

2007 started off with wide temperature swings that are certainly characteristic of winter in the far north. After a relatively mild mid-January to mid-February period, the mercury plummeted and temperatures were well below normal through all of March. The average temperature for the months of February and March (-6.6°F, 10.3°F below normal) comes in a very close second to 1972 for the coldest on record. Even more impressive, however, is the February 16 to March 31 average temperature of -10.2°F; by far the coldest on record for this period. As would be expected with the cold, and generally clear days, snowfall was light during this time.

April marked a significant turnaround as mean daily temperatures were above average for nearly the entire month. Even a daily high temperature (56°F) tied a record on the 9th of April. Aside from only a scattering of days, the warm weather continued on through the summer season and into September. The average temperature for the summer (June, July, and August) was 62.2°F, making 2007 with 5th warmest on record in Fairbanks. The 4 warmer summers have all occurred since 1975 and recall that just 3 years ago was the warmest summer on record of 2004.

Even though the 2007 summer ranks 5th warmest, there were no real extreme hot days; no day with a high temperature above 85°F. Though the high of 82°F on August 17th did break the record high for that date. What seemed a bit unusual was to have both a warmer and wetter than normal summer. However, precipitation came mostly from localized convective-type showers, and the totals varied for different locations across the area. At the airport, however, the summer total was 7.07 inches, about 2 inches more than normal. The growing season was longer than normal as the first date of freeze was not until September 21st. The last date of freeze in the spring was May 9th, allowing for a growing season length of 134 days (about 20 days longer than normal).

October was a bit cooler than normal and snowfall a few inches less than normal for the month. The low snowfall continued through to the end of the year and only 19.7 inches had fallen by the start of 2008, a bit less than half the normal cumulative total. At the airport, 9 inches of snow was on the ground at the end of December, also about half of the normal amount. Temperatures were warmer than normal for November and December on average. There was a significant warm-up around Thanksgiving as temperatures soared into the 40s thanks to a Chinook event. In contrast, there was only one brief cold spell lasting just a few days around mid-December as temperatures were down below -40°F for the first time of the 2007-08 winter season.


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Questions or comments? Please contact the Alaska Climate Research Center.
Preliminary climatological data are used for this summary. Please report any errors found to the Climate Center

Posted: 11 January, 2008

[Dionne]

You cannot judge the weather conditions in Alaska by whats happening in Anchorage. Anchorage is just a city in south central Alaska. Anchorage is warmed by the Japanese current that runs through the Gulf of Alaska. Fairbanks is in the interior, where you really experience the weather extremes. Juneau is down on the pan-handle of southeastern Alaska, they get all the rain. The distances are huge. It's like evaluating the averages in Denver and using them for NYC.

Have the rules changed? Are we allowed to talk about Al Gore now?

[Stephanie]

You cannot judge the weather conditions in Alaska by whats happening in Anchorage. Anchorage is just a city in south central Alaska. Anchorage is warmed by the Japanese current that runs through the Gulf of Alaska. Fairbanks is in the interior, where you really experience the weather extremes. Juneau is down on the pan-handle of southeastern Alaska, they get all the rain. The distances are huge. It's like evaluating the averages in Denver and using them for NYC.

Have the rules changed? Are we allowed to talk about Al Gore now?

If we're talking about GW and debating his movie's message, then yes. If we're talking politics, the answer is no.

[Category 5]

I'll take some of their weather. Been a hot summer down here.

[Dionne]

Yeah......100F yesterday and currently 98F today. It's like walking into an oven. Lawns are brown and the garden is done until the fall planting. I'm disappointed to miss the summer dusting of snow above the Matanuska Valley. Our homestead was at mile 92 on the Parks.....near Talkeetna. I'd prolly freeze at 65F right now.