Nunavut is being hit with lightning from top to bottom because a “pretty significant heat wave” created the right conditions for a phenomenon that’s ordinarily uncommon in the North, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada says. Since Saturday, there have been reports of lightning strikes as far north as 79 degrees latitude.
There were 4,500 lightning strikes in Alaska Tuesday — the latest in a run of days with thousands of ground strikes. There were also another 13 new, primarily lightning sparked wildfires in the state Tuesday, mostly in the Interior. The lightning storms have coincided with very dry conditions.
The North Klondike Highway remains closed from Stewart Crossing to Pelly Crossing after fire breached the highway, the Yukon government has confirmed.
On July 1, approximately 1,400 people experienced an outage in Dawson City caused by lightning. The community was partially restored after eight minutes, and fully restored after an hour. Five power outages occurred in Dawson City, Mayo and Whitehorse over the Canada Day weekend.
Anchorage saw temperatures spike above 60 degrees every day in June for the first time in recorded history. The city also experienced near record low precipitation: Only 1/10 of an inch of rain fell the entire month.
Temperatures surpassed 30 degrees Celsius across northern Scandinavia on Wednesday and many meteorological stations hit new record high temperatures for June. The thermometer in Saltdal, northern Norway, reached 31.6 degrees C. Further inside the Arctic Circle, at 69 degrees north in Skibotn east of Tromsø, the temperature was 31.7 degrees (89 F).
The fire also comes as the state of Alaska enters its second highest level of fire preparedness, based on the high number of wildfires burning statewide and the possibility for more.
The state has established a fire response hub in Aniak to issue supplies to the surrounding fires.
A record-high temperature set in Winnipeg in 1888 was among 21 previous records that were broken Sunday across the province.
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