Even Alaska, the nation’s largest and northernmost state, has lurched into the 90s, toppling additional records in a place already on the front lines of a rapidly warming climate.
The Last Frontier also has faced dangerous fire-weather conditions, severe thunderstorms and an influx of Canadian wildfire smoke. Much like the contiguous United States, the recipe for heat in Alaska has been a stagnant “heat dome,” or ridge of high pressure, bringing hot, sinking air.Fairbanks, where the average high temperature in late July is 72 degrees, has been in the 80s each day over the past week, and the city reached a high of 90 degrees Monday.
The heat has been more impressive in far northern Alaska along the North Slope, where the nation’s northernmost town has logged a string of records in recent days. That’s been the case in Utqiaġvik, formerly known as Barrow and the northernmost U.S. city, where highs have been running 25 degrees above average.
“We set four records in the span of less than a week [in Utqiaġvik], which I would say is a good amount in a short span,” said Erin Billings, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Fairbanks. Typical midsummer temperatures are in the 40s; after all, Utqiaġvik, which is home to 4,300 people, sits 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle.“I see that we hit a 74 up there, which was set on Wednesday, July 19, which completely obliterated the record of 67 degrees set back in 1953,” Billings said. “We had high pressure over the area, and this just set us up for a number of days where we set records.
So far this month, Utqiaġvik, AK, has seen their warmest 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12-day period on record. The month is nearly a lock to finish as their second warmest month on record .
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