And crazy enough, it was one of several jaw dropping climate events taking place across our largest state.And the anomalous Arctic heat has not been short-lived. But now imagine you live in Alaska. ... with a high temperature of 85 degrees. Instead, the heat's persistence was the story.We recognize our responsibility to use data and technology for good. The airport reached an astounding, for Alaska, 90°F, breaking the previous all-time record by 5°F! And three of those days broke or tied the previous all-time record! Anchorage hit 90 degrees Thursday to break the all-time highest temperature ever recorded at the official recording station. These records were observed at the Ted Stevens International Airport near downtown Anchorage and go back to 1954.
NOAA Climate.gov image, based on NOAA/NASA satellite data provided by Worldview.2014 Webby Award winning website
The warmth extended above the Arctic Circle. Anchorage, Talkeetna (which saw a July record daily high of 93°F), and King Salmon also observed their warmest week on record.In a historical context, Alaska has a tendency for warmer than average conditions during the summer when El Niño conditions are present in the equatorial Pacific.
People wait in line for ice drinks at Delaney Park in Anchorage, Alaska, on July 4, 2019. The exceptional warmth in Alaska in March 2019 has been stoked by a mix of weather events and a rapidly warming climate. Both Fairbanks, in central Alaska, and Anchorage, on the southern coast, were under the pall, creating unhealthy air quality. Utqiaġvik – formerly known as Barrow – clobbered its previous warmest month from August 1989 by 1.5 degrees.At times, given the heat and humidity, even a typically muggy dew point of 70 degrees felt like relief.Juneau, Alaska, just missed its hottest-month record, which was set last July.Overnight lows were also oppressive at times.July 2019 was the hottest month on record in Alaska, and also tied or set new records in three New England cities.This follows the warmest June on record in Anchorage, Kotzebue, Talkeetna and Yakutat, Alaska.Along with a persistent dome of high pressure near the state, another factor both contributing to and caused by the persistent warmth is a record-low midsummer ice coverage in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas around the northern Alaskan coast.Parts of the Northeast also set new all-time hottest-month records.That included Boston, which soared past its previous monthly record from July 1983.Yet the official reporting station near Logan Airport never recorded a single daily record-high temperature during the month.
The highest temperature measured during that time was 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) on July 4, 2019. Not so normal anymore, is it? Anchorage posted its hottest day on record Thursday, hitting 90 degrees, and then twice matched its previous all-time highest temperature of …