Another Warm Month in Alaska

Observation: Another month ends and, surprise, another month of jaw dropping extremes, with a large number of Alaska locations having the warmest April of record, many by a considerable amount. The only comparable April was 1940, and some places with records back that far in South Central and Southwest Alaska exceeded even that exceptional month.

Some highlights:

• The Alaska-wide temperature anomaly index has been in the "significantly above normal" category every day since March 19th.
• Maximum sea ice extent in the Bering Sea appears to have occurred just before the F17 sensor failure and just barely exceeded last year, which was the lowest of the satellite era (though this year was much lower on the Alaska side of the Bering).
• We've already seen the earliest ice break-up on the big rivers at number of locations, including the Yukon R. at Eagle and Circle and Kuskokwim R. at Bethel. Break-up of the Tanana R. at Nenana was fourth earliest of record.
• Green-up in Fairbanks was April 26, two weeks early and the earliest in the 39 year time series.

For the Feb-Mar-Apr season at the long term climate sites, this was

• warmest of record at Anchorage, Bethel, Cold Bay, Cordova Airport, Delta Junction, Eagle, Juneau Airport, Ketchikan, Kenai, King Salmon (by 4.4ºF!), Nome, Northway, Sitka Airport, Talkeetna, Yakutat
• second warmest of record at Barrow, Bettles, Fairbanks (using the threaded time series back to 1904, otherwise warmest in the WB/NWS era, since 1930), Gulkana, Kodiak, Kotzebue, St. Paul