The love of winter in Alaska's Golden Heart City of Fairbanks is likely waning for many residents.
In a place known for cold, it's been downright frigid this winter. And on top of that, an eye-popping amount of snow has fallen in Fairbanks.
National Weather Service climate researcher Brian Brettschneider -- back for another Ask a Climatologist segment -- told Alaska Public Media's Casey Grove that even the heartiest of Fairbanks sourdoughs are struggling to remember a winter as cold and snowy.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Brian Brettschneider: This December-through-February period is going to be their coldest in over 50 years. So the old timers talk about what it used to be like, well, that's what this winter is. Well below normal temperatures. The number of negative 40 days, consecutive day, streaks. And there's just no other way to describe it as anything other than a really cold winter for, particularly, the Interior.
Casey Grove: And you said, for the winter, we're expecting it to be the coldest in 50 years. But what have they already seen? I mean, remind me, because there have been some superlatives already this winter for Fairbanks, right?
BB: Well, really, the most noteworthy thing is the number of minus 40 degree days, right? And so today (Thursday), as we're recording this, it's the 22nd day of the winter that they've hit minus 40, and it's very likely to have two more such days. And that's the most of any winter in the previous 53 years. So we're going to be up to about 24, and no other winter in that period has had as many as 20. It's not a record, (not) an all-time record, which would be quite a number of more days, you know, back in the 1920s and '30s. But this is really noteworthy for how many of the really deep cold days there's been compared to the last half century.
CG: I feel like it can't go unsaid that along with the cold, it's been a pretty snowy winter in Fairbanks, and just recently here, too, they've had even more snow. I had seen some graphics about how it was the most in this particular time period. Maybe you can fill me in on that.
BB: Yeah, a lot of times, we think about the really cold winters as maybe not having a lot of snow, just because you have either high pressure or a northerly flow where there's not much moisture. But not only has it been so cold, as you noted, this month, the month we're currently in, February, is the second snowiest February on record: 38.7 inches, and it's in the top 10 for snowiest any month.
Usually, the snowiest months tend to be earlier in the winter and less so toward the spring, where it's traditionally the drier season. So really a remarkable amount of snow. And that brings the season total now up to almost 90 inches. You know, a normal season has about 65, so already that's about 25 inches above normal. If it doesn't snow again the rest of the winter, and it probably will, once you get another six inches, it'll, be the snowy season in in over 30 years for this century.
CG: Now, humans are always trying to search for some, you know, greater meaning in these things, including in Fairbanks, and I wonder, is it snowier in Fairbanks, climatologically speaking, this winter and past winters, and why is that
BB: So this is really an outlier. So for Fairbanks, as far as the snow goes this winter there, there's been a couple of snowy winters in the last decade, 15 years, but there's also been some winters that didn't have a lot. So there's not really a trend that people should be kind of reading into this.
It's worth also noting that up until the last week or so, much of the Interior, particularly western Alaska, has been almost in a snow drought. There's been much less snow than normal in most of the western half of the mainland. Now, they're getting caught up as best they can in the last week or 10 days with a couple of storms. But prior to that, many people in the state were talking about how little snow there had been this winter.
CG: Interesting. Now, turning away from Fairbanks, how have things shaped up across the state this winter?
BB: In much of the mainland, for snow, it's been a low snow winter compared to recent winters statewide. If you look at the map of who's above and who's below normal, there's a lot of places that are below normal, and the previous few winters had a lot of places that were above normal.
Now, statewide, as far as the temperatures go, this has certainly been a cold winter. We're kind of on par with maybe slightly warmer than the winter of 2019-2020. But that winter aside, this will be the coldest winter in about 25 years. So, you know, this century.
So it's, again, another winter where it's looking like something that was common pre-, say, 1975. This would be a middle-of-the-pack winter. But for the last five decades, this is a an unusually cold winter.
