Rick Thoman

Denali National Park in winter

A man from Team Northwest Territories balances on one hand with his feet in the air while reaching to touch a suspended seal skin ball with his free hand.

The Arctic Winter Games have a lot of the sports you’d expect at the Winter Olympics, but also a category of strength and agility events grouped under the name Arctic Sports. They’re my fave! This, for example, is the One Arm Reach:

A spectacular morning!

Fairbanks airport just after 8am AKDT Tuesday dipped to -41F/-40.6C. This ties the record low for March 10 first set in 1931, also the latest date in the season with a temp of -40F/C or lower since 1964. #akwx #weather #Climate @carrieinfbx.bsky.social @leahwrenn.bsky.social @coyotetrail.bsky.social

Map centered on Alaska showing site-specific high temperatures (ºF) on Monday, March 9, 2026. Plotted temperature range from -19F at Toolik Lake, AK to 39F at Prince Rupert, BC.

High temperatures (ºF) in and around Alaska on Monday. Colder than normal everywhere. FWIW, this is the first day this year when none of the locations plotted here had a high temp of 40F (4.4C) or higher. #akwx #weather @climatologist49.bsky.social

Alaska’s glacial lakes are expanding, increasing the risk of destructive outburst floods Scientists mapped the evolution of 140 glacial lakes in Alaska and found a way to tell how much larger and destructive they can get as their glaciers melt.

theconversation.com/alaskas-glac...

Thanks for your thoughtful analysis. I agree in principle with your recommendations, but I think there’s a scale issue. There’d need to be enough folks to do these kinds of jobs to handle the largest, most widespread outbreaks. That “worst case” staffing level has never happened in NOAA.

Bare birch trees border a cross country ski trail, bright blue ski

Skiiiiiiiiiii!

Happy little trees.

A marine heat wave continues to impact the U.S. West Coast EEZ (exclusive economic zone)
www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-stor...

Almost certainly a fluke in the sense of a lot of pieces coming together to produce the persistent cold. Also, purely random, Fairbanks at almost exactly the center of the cold (relative to normal). Eastern Interior Alaska had coldest winter “only” since 1998-99, western Alaska 2020-21 was colder.

Map of North America with Canada in blue (cold) and USA in red (warm). Colours refer to departures from the long-term climate average.

Wyld and super rare zonal winter / spring division (in terms of temperature anomaly) - coincidentally following geographical borders (by and large).

www.karstenhaustein.com/climate

Fairbanks residents are feeling the pinch of high home heating costs with the coldest December-March in 55 years. Total heating degree day are about 7 percent above normal. Seasonal costs tempered by the milder than normal autumn 2025 or it would be more like 1970-71. #akwx #Climate #Energy

For Juneau airport snow totals the results are functionally the same since snow is not an issue July-September.

The Nenana Ice Classic tripod was raised yesterday. The ice thickness on March 3rd was 51". @alaskawx.bsky.social

Exciting news for #Climate analysis and monitoring. @climatologist49.bsky.social

Map centered on Alaska showing site-specific high temperatures (ºF) on Sunday, March 8, 2026. Plotted temperature range from -18F at Toolik Lake, AK to 42F at Sandspit, BC.

High temperatures (ºF) in and around Alaska on Sunday. Colder in Southeast Alaska and continued below normal across the region. Statewide, this was the 13th day in a row to be colder than normal: only three days in the past month have been above normal. #akwx #weather @climatologist49.bsky.social

500 mb standardized departures for the Dec-Feb period. There's a +3.5 std. dev. contour over the 4-Corners region.

The standardized anomaly part is easy: that's just the departure from normal (in this case meters) divided by the standard deviation (also in this case meters). So the standardized anomaly takes into account the local year-to-year variability. Wiki explanation here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomaly...

I should have made the contours thinner.

With that height pattern, Alaska should have been colder. The fact that we were not colder is a worrying sign.

Map centered near the North Pole showing standardized 500 hPa height anomalies for the December 2025 through February 2026 winter season.

Nerd alert: standardized 500 hPa height anomalies are the answer key to the major winter 2025-26 temperature/precip pattern over much of North America. Look at those anomalies over the Bering Sea and 4-corners area! H/T @climatologist49.bsky.social @weatherwest.bsky.social #weather #Climate

A tale of two years. March 8, 2025, versus March 8, 2026. Official snow depth was Trace last year and 30" this year.

Deep blue sky. White ski trail.

My goodness, what a day. 💙 #Fairbanks

Photos taken in a Irene Arnold's home in Tanacross in 2008.

In honor of #InternationalWomensDay, three Tanacross Dene women who influenced my life more than they ever knew: top Irene Arnold and Isabel John, bottom: Laura Sanford and Isabel John (sisters). #Indigenous #Alaska

Left: Bering Sea daily sea ice extent 1978-79 to 2025-26 with the past two seasons and the smoothed 1991-2020 median highlighted. Right: NWS Alaska Sea Ice Program sea ice concentration analysis to March 7, 2026.

With sustained north winds and low temperatures, sea ice extent in the Bering Sea has increased by more than 50 percent in the past two weeks in NSIDC data. Extent is now the highest in March since 2014 (briefly higher in Feb 2022). Extent will increase some more in days ahead. #akwx #Arctic #SeaIce

Bad news: Dec through Feb 2025-26, 80 percent of the globe had an average temperature above the 1991-2020 baseline average.

Map centered on Alaska showing site-specific high temperatures (ºF) on Saturday, March 7, 2026. Plotted temperature range from -27F at Toolik Lake, AK to 50F at Sandspit, BC.

High temperatures (ºF) in and around Alaska on Saturday, March 7, 2026. Unseasonably cold in the Brooks Range, and Bering Strait south to Bristol Bay and Kodiak Island. Milder Copper River basin eastward into the southern Yukon Territory. #akwx #weather @climatologist49.bsky.social

Fairbanks average temperature the first week of March was -15.4F (-26.3C). This is just over 20F below normal and the coldest start to March since 2007. At Anchorage, average temperature March 1 to 7 was 8.9F (-12.8C), nearly 15F below normal and cold first week in March since 1992. #akwx #Climate

Splash screen for the post: Arctic February & Winter 2025-26 Climate Review: Not like the old days, but distinctly colder and drier than last winter.

Winter 2025-26 in the Arctic was notably colder and drier than last winter. Not like back in the day, though February gave a hearty nod in that direction. Details in the latest from the Alaska and Arctic Climate newsletter. #Arctic #Climate #Winter2026

alaskaclimate.substack.com/p/arctic-feb...