climate (Anchorage, Fairbanks, Ketchikan: home, high school, college)

[onthamove]

just a few questions about climate in alaska. first off in a state the size of alaska i realize weather is very local. where in particular say at 8 or 10 k feet is the cold a dry cold, that is a cold with low humidity or is it like boston damp and cold? and lets say we are talking about 10k feet in the central part of alaska very far from any water. also is there anywhere other than denali with snow all year long? i want powpow and i want it now

[Rance]

It's dryer here than down your way in winter. Extremely dry up north even at sealevel. Many mountains have snow of some sort in summer. Not just Denali.

[JessE86]

I am from Boston.. .. originally, I have been in Alaska for 30 years, most of my time is spent in the Arctic.

The cold is as different as night and day, let me explain .. .. In 1983 I brought my Eskimo wife to Boston.. this woman has lived her whole life in the arctic with temps often reaching 50 below zero. No problem, however in Boston Feb (of 83) it was 30 above zero.

She froze, wearing her big thick Eskimo Parky !! She could not take 30 above zero !! It was too cold, the cold back east penetrates through all the clothing you have on, right into your bones. That is not the case here in Alaska, it is a common sight in Anchorage to see college students and high schoolers wearing short cuts and t-shirts when it is zero outside !!

Up here, the cold does not penetrate your clothing, the cold just gets on you, it doesn't penetrate as it does on the East Coast !!

[Floyd_Davidson]

Originally Posted by onthamove

just a few questions about climate in alaska. first off in a state the size of alaska i realize weather is very local. where in particular say at 8 or 10 k feet is the cold a dry cold, that is a cold with low humidity or is it like boston damp and cold? and lets say we are talking about 10k feet in the central part of alaska very far from any water. also is there anywhere other than denali with snow all year long? i want powpow and i want it now

There are lots and lots of misconceptions about climates here in Alaska. For example, people say it is dry here on the North Slope; it isn't (the lowest typical Relative Humidity here is in January and February, when it might be 70-75%). That is nothing like the Interior, where RH might be less than 20%. The same is true of temperature, where everyone is aware that Barrow is the "coldest" place in Alaska... except it never is! It has the coldest average, but on almost any given day there is someplace else in Alaska that is colder. We never see extremes here. The Interior holds all the records for low temperatures in the winter.

Climates across Alaska are fairly consistant. Near coastal areas there are few or no extremes. The farther north the lower the temperatures (summer and winter). The areas in the Interior (north of the Alaska Range, south of the Brooks Range and more than 150 miles or so inland) are in the land of extremes. High temperatures in summer, low temperatures in winter and relative humidity that goes from none to raining... but it almost impossible to find a day where the weather matches the average climage conditions!

I'm not sure if the mountains on the Aleutian Chain are snow capped year round, but everywhere else in Alaska that is available.

[Glitch]

With regard to annual precipitation (annual snowfall is in parenthesis) around Alaska, the statistics speak for themselves:

• Ketchikan, 152.38" (36.9")
• Wangrell, 79.44" (54.8")
• Juneau, 56.97" (94.4")
• Haines, 47.77" (122.7")
• Cordova, 160.62" (103.6")
• Valdez, 62.18" (220.1")
• Kodiak, 76.87" (70.2")
• Whittier, 197.51" (248.5")
• Seward, 68.12" (83.1")
• Homer, 24.64" (54.9")
• Keani, 19.07" (61.2")
• Soldotna, 16.82" (46.1")
• Sterling, 18.04" (61.8")
• Girdwood, 41.53" (121.9")
• Anchorage, 15.79" (69.9")
• Eagle River, 21.12" (96.7")
• Palmer, 15.49" (57.2")
• Wasilla, 18.32" (59.3")
• Glennallen, 11.12" (52.2")
• Talkeetna, 27.93" (120.6")
• Paxson, 20.92" (106.4")
• Tok, 9.22" (34.7")
• Fairbanks, 10.53" (67.1")
• Fort Yukon, 6.57" (41.9")
• Cold Foot, 15.34" (113.1")
• Prudhoe Bay, 4.26" (33.1")
• Barrow, 4.58" (30.3")

An area with an annual rainfall of fewer than 25 centimeters (9.75") generally qualifies as a desert. In either case, the north slope is very dry indeed. Bring Chapstick!

Source: http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/summary/Climsmak.html

[Rance]

I only wish we could get 61 inches of snow in Sterling. All at once.

[Floyd_Davidson]

Originally Posted by Glitch

An area with an annual rainfall of fewer than 25 centimeters (9.75") generally qualifies as a desert. In either case, the north slope is very dry indeed. Bring Chapstick!

Your logic is pure nonsense in regard to dry and chapstick.

The North Slope is a wet desert! There's water everywhere you look.

Chapstick is needed in places where the air is dry, as in low relative humidity. Fairbanks, for example, with it's roughly 10 inches of precipitation per year is a semi arid region, and is "dry". You'll need chapstick, and if your eyes don't moisten above average it might be very difficult to wear contact lenses. And all of that is because it is not unusual to have relative humidity numbers that are very low in the Interior.

Look at the charts shown at these two URLs (about half way down the page) for Relative Humidity.

http://www.city-data.com/city/Fairbanks-Alaska.html
http://www.city-data.com/city/Barrow-Alaska.html

Fairbanks' afternoon RH averages barely above 70% in only three months of the year (and goes lower than 40% in May!). Barrow on the other hand gets barely below 70% in only three months of the year, and averages in the mid-80's for six straight months!

The North Slope is indeed a desert, but it is a very wet desert!

[Rance]

And extremely dry in mid winter. Just ask my skin.

[Classic Satch]

Originally Posted by Rance

I only wish we could get 61 inches of snow in Sterling. All at once.

Yeah, I'd love to know where the 59" of snow went this winter. Honestly, Glitch posted time-tested averages.

However, I experienced far more snow in my home town of New Castle PA than I did here in Wasilla. Of course, much of it is probably due to the lake-effect off of Lake Erie. On the flip-side, never did I experience a few weeks of -30 to -40 that I did in January.

The biggest difference between a western PA winter and a Wasilla winter is the length. When it comes to snowfall, it's a wash, at best.

However, the crazy winds blowing through my subdivision in January completely cleared my yard and driveway. That was pretty nuts.

[onthamove]

thanks folks!!! that's crazy that the winded plowed your drive for you. I've been all throughout the west and liked the arid climate, to me the arid climate begins anywhere west of a line from oklahoma city to salina, kansas. glad to here alaskas cold isnt like the cold here. in ky here we have a state of extremes. the northern area up here along the ohio river gets pelted with heavy snow about every three weeks with 6-10'' the central part of the state gets ice storms that are just unimaginable we are talking 1-1.5'' of pure freezing rain and that is a deadly amount of just ice and the southern part of the state has it worst most winters are in the upper 30s with copious rainfall amounts.
I dont think i wan to visit the seas of alaska the alaska range and the brooks range sound promising. i am headed up about a year to date from now actaully. the east sucks so bad, its amazing how i feel once i cross the ling between plain and woodland at about 99d west the sky opens and the earth is like a table and not only can you see the freedom out yonder you can taste it and i mean that maybe not the folks that live there but if you've experienced 19 years in the *****hole of the east you'd definetly get me.