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Downtown Anchorage, Alaska, has seen a snowy and icy winter, including this scene from Jan. 18.
Even if it has been warmer than usual in much of the United States, there's no denying Alaska is seeing a real winter, even by its standards.
Anchorage is shivering through one of its coldest January's on record, while in Fairbanks, folks preparing for a sled dog race were being tested by temperatures nearly 50 degrees below zero. Farther inland, Fort Yukon has ranged from minus 50 to minus 62 degrees over the last three days, getting close to its record of minus 78.
Anchorage's average temperature for January has been 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the Alaska Daily News reported. That's well below its average of 15 degrees, and only three other years (1947, 1925 and 1920) have been colder, National Weather Service data show.
It's so cold for Anchorage, the Daily News reported, that:
- Cross country ski practices by the Junior Nordic League have been canceled due to temps dipping below the official cut-off of minus 4 degrees.
- Tow trucks are so busy helping folks with dead car batteries that it can take up to four hours to get service.
- Some schools have had only a handful of outdoor recess days this month.
In Fairbanks, where the Yukon Quest sled dog race starts on Saturday, some racers have had a hard time moving their trucks around due to a freeze that kept engines from starting, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.
Fort Yukon, for its part, dipped to 62 degrees below zero on Saturday, then hit 59 below on Sunday, the National Weather Service reported.
The deep freeze is in addition to the record snow and blizzard conditions seen earlier this month in towns like Cordova and Valdez. Even Anchorage is on track to see a record snow season, having received more than twice its average amount so far.
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I can't believe an article about the weather has turned, yet again, into a mudslinging political discussion. Ok...I can't believe it. Never mind!
I remember a 60 below morning in Minnesota and that was without wind chill factor. NOBODIES car started ... the service stations (if they even made it to work) just took the phones off the hook. And if you have a mobile home, the walls start snapping and popping starting at about 25 below. I don't miss it. You couldn't GIVE me a FREE place in Alaska, I don't care how "beautiful" it is!
My brother lives 10 miles south of Fairbanks. He is in a valley, so the temp is usually 10 degrees COLDER (if that is possible) than what is reported for Fairbanks. Once the temp drops below -40, stuff shuts down. When the temp drops to below -50, numerous 'snow snake' spottings are reported. For those who don't know, a 'snow snake' is an automobile's fan belt which snaps due to the excessive cold.
Believe it or not, Fairbanks gets less than 10 inches of precipition per year, which qualifies it as 'desert climate'. Hard to believe. Anyway, while I like the cold, this is way too cold for me!
Knock knock, Sarah!!! Knock knock
Her brain is frozen too. She's not responding. Hello!! Mc Fly!!
Or it always was - lol
The below average temperatures Alaskans are experiencing makes me think about bikini clad women sipping frozen margaritas while lounging on a sandy Texas beach.
Clearly people need to learn how to use SPELL CHECK - it's the little thing that says "ABC" with a check mark which stands for spell check. I can always get a good laugh from reading posts that have so many spelling and grammatical errors - drives me crazy to the point of chewing glass :) Appears that many were asleep during English class and paid no attention at all in elementary school when they took spelling tests on a weekly basis.
That appears to be a fragment. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
How cold is it? So cold I saw a dog froze to the tire of a parked car!
-62 F , now that is "brass monkey " weather. "Cold enough to freeze the balls(cannon) of a "brass monkey"
Not the brass monkey or the balls you gutter minds are thinking of. Look up the phrase, it's an old sailing term.
Being raised in Minnesota I have been cold a time or two.
What this article fails to mention, and they probably did it on purpose, is tell how hard the wind is blowing!! With temperatures like in the article and combined with the wind, the Wind Chill Factor has to be outrageous. I was stationed in Alaska in 1975 and the coldest chill factor we had was -72 degrees, so we had to go to work!!
Here in Fairbanks there really is no wind right now. So the temp you see does not include the wind chill factor. Yesterday at my house, it was -51, absolutely no wind. I left nothing out on purpose, I just cannot read your mind.
Is that what you were looking for?
It's cold. At 50 below tubeless tires fall off their rims, antifreeze freezes, automatic transmission fluid doesn't flow in your automatic transmission. The vapor that you breath out your nose crystalizes and builds up on your parka fur or ski mask which you had better be wearing because breathing in outside air directly can damage your throat. If you pee outside the urine freeze drys before it hits the ground.
And your tears become contact lenses of ice.
LOL. Suckers. It's going to be 55 here tomorrow. I <3 Global Warming.
I'm going to print up a bumper sticker that says that, to slap on my gas guzzling V8 SUV.
I wonder if the Alaskan republicans are as cold hearted as the rest. They have already most likely cut off aid to seniors for home heating oil. It must be part of the plan they have to save Social Security and Medicare, if all the old folks freeze to death there will be more money left for future generations. Good plan and good for the Polar bears too, dead old people don't run.
TAJ -
Once it get below about -30 political parties don't exist.
I would think if anyone in Alaska brought up the pending doom of "global warming" they might find their tongues stuck to a flag pole until spring.
the dividend here in alaska is money that the state took in over the years from oil revenue that the people of alaska desided to invest. the checks are for profits on our investments. (welfare?? really, is that what you liberals think? ) make fun of us all you want, but at least our state and people did not OVERSPEND and scwander the money. we invested it and now each year we get a dividend. (maybe instead of makeing fun of us the rest of the united states should....oh i dont know....maybe at least pay down the dam dept! then after that, start haveing a surplus and then....oh, i dont know....maybe invest it??? but what do we know... (ps, make fun of my spelling if you like, i not much good at it and never have been so it will it will at least give you liberals a retort, its what you do best when people show you dont know your but from a hole in the ground.)
Very well said and to the point. I guess the Liberals are now going to ask for a piece of your success and hard work. That's what going on in the lower 48. The new liberal bumper sticker should read "Success is Bad and Failure is Mad".
When Alaska stops taking $1.84 from the federal government for every $1.00 it pays, then you might have a point.
An old classmate on face-book says he was driving down the road there in Alaska and looked at his thermometer and he said it was only 36 below and there for it was a good day. Why do people live in Alaska anyway? To get away from the rest of us I would suspect. Animals are better than people. You can shoot and eat them and they never complain.
Idiot liberals always want to interject politics into a non-political. Liberals, your days are numbered. 2012 we will get rid of BO from the White house. Don't like it? .. then get the hell out of my country you socialist pigs.
Bang on - amazing how an innocent thread about super cold weather got quickly turned into a mud slinging, Palin bashing display of idiocy. November can't get here soon enough.
Football Guy and Rick,
You two seem to be providing the commentary of politics. I am not arguing for either Party, but you are being hypoctrites.
My other post was about the Snow Owl irruption and its Tundra change relativity.
So, how do you like it at -52 degrees? I personally find that about 100+ degrees too cold!
Peace
The wording , Global Warming does also include extreme cold weather conditions as well as other weather extremes .
Yes, it's very convenient - "Global warming" apparently allows for ANY kind of weather. It's hard to point to evidence that disputes global warming when it's proponents keep changing the definition. It's ALL "global warming", so don't argue with me when I will put all kinds of legislation in place that taxes the cr*p out of people but will solve the problem of that pesky "global warming" that apparently means just about ANY kind of weather. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Oh and by the way? Whatever happened to that ice age scientists were screaming about back in the 70s?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm
So MSNBC does one story on how warm the winter has been and another on how cold the winter has been. Alaska, Canada, Europe and Russia are freezing their butts off. The position of the Jet Stream is keeping the cold in the Arctic.
Of course a couple of years ago they were all doom and gloom on the Arctic melting because the wind patterns were driving the Arctic cold into the US.
Meanwhile this year the ice is growing so fast that crab fishing is being interrupted and Aleutian ice is 300 miles farther than normal.
http://www.adn.com/2012/01/25/2283664/ice-in-central-bering-sea-is-threatening.html
http://www.real-science.com/aleutian-ice-extends-300-miles-normal?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Real-Science%2Ffeed+%28Real+Science%29
So Al Gore goes down to Antarctica trying to drum up a scare about ice loss because he knows he would be a laughing stock if he went to the Arctic this year.
And let's not forget about how all of these same "experts" were screaming about the coming ice age back in the 1970s. They are all full of it.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm
dang. i'm so hungry for a grilled cheese sandwich right now.
Economykiller; A link from your link.
Polar Heat Bringing Harder Winters - IPS ipsnews.net
Context is good.
I'm thinking grilled chees sand with tomato soup.
Global Warming LOL!
Does this mean Sarah's got "dots" under her blouse?
(be still my heart ... )
that's hysterical!
Whoa. Even more climate change. More global warming. I tell you warmer summers, colder winters for alaska. I hope sarah is in alaska taking it all in. But i tell you that you should pray for the animal and plant life there. They are the ones most affected by climate change.
Global warming
Or it may be too icy to fly up on the sky.
Glad I am in Argentina at the moment and not in the cold. Sorry to all of my friends in Alaska. I am too old to take that cold anymore.
hmmm. i live on something called the niagra escarpment,rumor has it,this and the great lakes were carved out by glaciers.
way before us common ppl drove exhaust belching automobiles...and al gore flew around on even more exhaust belching airplanes...
sooo in the name of science..when the heck did this warming disaster start?
It's called "climate change", not "warming", and one cold year does not mean that the planet isn't changing due to an excess of carbon. Read, learn, grow.
It's called B.S.