Alaska Weather Blog and Alaska Weather Store
Alaska is a great place to celebrate Independence day, and historically, the weather is decent, more often then not. This histogram shows the percentage of time each station received the listed amount of precipitation on July 4th over their period of weather records, 68 years minimum. Of these 4 metro (“Alaskan metro”) centers it is […]
Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, at least from the astronomer’s point of view. From the climatologist’s perspective, the start of summer is a little more subjective, but the months of June, July and August are generally accepted as defining summer. […]
Some days have boring clouds, or worse yet*, no clouds. Others I call good cloud days, because of the interesting, and often fast-changing, cloudscapes. Here are some of photos of a few of good cloud days I’ve experienced recently. I hope you appreciate the clouds you see, not just for their beauty but for the […]
About this time of year, most Alaskans are thinking about Spring with every other brain cycle. Old timers will often say “If you put that snow shovel away now you’re just asking for a big dump of snow.” Are these late season dumps a likely reality, or do the few that have happen just stick […]
The simple answer: It’s the elevation above which any precipitation is expected to be snow, and below which, rain. It is interesting that the term is not found in the NWS online glossary http://www.weather.gov/glossary/ nor in the AMS’s online glossary http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/ nor in their printed version, Glossary of Weather and Climate. It is, nonetheless, a […]
There’s a lot of talk about snow this winter, which makes it just like any winter in Alaska, or say Washington or Massachusetts. If your ski trail looks like the one on the left then the talk’s going to sound pretty down. If it looks like the one on the right, then you’re probably pretty […]
While I find clouds fascinating, there is nothing like the clear blue sky, and when the sky is clear in Alaska, and especially Southeast Alaska, it is very clear and very blue thanks to the clean air. This photo was taken on the 17th from Haines looking across Lynn Canal at Santa Claus Mt. (can […]
When tourists see my Alaska Weather Calendar a certain percentage chuckle and ask “is is accurate?” What they’re assuming is that I’m forecasting the weather for the entire next year (almost a two year forecast since I print the calendars the spring previous to the calendar year). They liken it to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. […]
Everything is bigger and more powerful in Alaska. Well, most things anyway. Certainly weather. While some folks were marveling at and bickering over a Midwest low pressure system that bottomed out at 955 mb in Minnesota a few weeks ago there were several of about that depth passing through the last frontier and one since […]
Good news for those who like to view the aurora borealis (northern lights). There has been recent solar activity that has good potential for a decent display tonight (August 4-5). In a larger sense, the overall solar activity seems to be picking up after several quiet years. Activity on the sun, e.g. sunspots and solar […]