Even Alaska is facing exceptional heat with highs topping 90 degrees

The Lower 48 states have been roasting lately — with more than 180 million people under heat alerts.

But the heat isn’t unique to the Lower 48. 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.

Ocean temperatures are off the charts. Here’s where they’re highest.

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. That beat the calendar day record of 89 set in 1968.

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Highs in Fairbanks were expected to peak in the mid-80s on Friday before settling back into the mid- to upper 70s for the remainder of the week. The month to date has hovered 3.7 degrees above average.

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.

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“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 (July 2019).

To put the 74-degree reading into perspective, Utqiaġvik has hit 74 or greater only eight times in the past century. The low temperature was just 53 degrees that same day (July 19), and Utqiaġvik also tied its all-time warmest average daily temperature of 64 degrees. The keeping of these records began in 1920.

Utqiaġvik also tied or broke three other calendar-day record highs from July 18 onward, and it shattered the mark for the city’s warmest week on record. Between July 18 and 24, Utqiaġvik’s average temperature, or a mean of the daily highs and lows, was 58.3 degrees. It surpassed the previous record-warmest week, which occurred in August 1989, by a whopping 3 degrees.

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Tied to the heat, northern and central Alaska also have experienced a slew of severe thunderstorms, including some in early July that may have produced hail up to the size of half-dollars. Additional thunderstorms since then have prompted red flag warnings for fire danger, with concerns that lightning could ignite new blazes. One such warning was issued Sunday between Denali and Fairbanks, and for the Yukon Flats to the north.

Last year the combination of hot and dry weather over Alaska led to one of its worst fire seasons on record. Until recently, this year’s fire season has been rather tame because of a wet spring and a lack of summer thunderstorms.

Alaska’s Division of Forestry and Fire Protection reported Thursday that there have been 22 lightning-caused fires since Monday afternoon because of storms in the interior.

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“We did have a slow start to our thunderstorm season,” Billings said. “But recently, our storms have forced us to issue some severe warnings. They occurred on the periphery of that high pressure.”

The recent weather pattern has featured a persistent heat dome over north-central Alaska. It has kept temperatures high and maintained the presence of humidity. “Shortwaves,” or pockets of high-altitude cold air, low pressure and spin, have been riding up and around the heat dome. Each can touch off showers and storms.

The North Slope of Alaska is one of the fastest-warming regions in the world because of human-caused climate change. Since 1971, Utqiaġvik has warmed a staggering 6 degrees, in large part because of the loss of sea ice.

That’s manifesting not just in temperatures but also in humidity. Dew points, a measure of how much moisture is present in the atmosphere, have risen dramatically since World War II, at a rate of more than 14 degrees per century. That has translated to a 60 percent increase in how much water the air is actually holding.

Suffice to say, the environment of northern Alaska is rapidly changing, and the latest records to fall are just a few in a long and ever-increasing pattern of warming.

Jason Samenow contributed to this report.

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