Sunday, December 18, 2011

Soundings from Fairbanks Sunday show the extreme warmth:



High temperatures Sunday include:

Woodsmoke PWS: 40F (near North Pole)
Eielson AFB: 39F
Fairbanks Airport: 37F
UAF West Ridge: 37F
Keystone Ridge: 33F
Cleary Summit: 33F

4 comments:

  1. Will this December be the warmest one on record?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Trung,

    This will of course depend on how the rest of the month turns out. The highest December mean temperature is 10.4F in 1914 and the warmest modern era December is 7.6F in 1985. Through the 18th the average temperature has been 12.9F. So to beat 1914 it would have to remain about as warm as it's been the next 12 days, while to exceed 1985 it could cool off some. Of course, even two or three days of -30s would knock down the monthly average by a fair bit.

    Models are no help in this case as they are all over the place for temperatures during the next two weeks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Trung,

    The numerical models have now (Tuesday morning)come around to agreeing on a major pattern change late this week, with very cold weather next week. This would mean no record warm December, though at this point it is probably too late to be anything other than "significantly above normal".

    Rick

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you Rick for your informative response. Also, thanks for making this blog.
    Trung

    ReplyDelete