Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 11/06/2008 8:25:13 AM PST by milwguy
FAIRBANKS — One of the coldest Octobers on record in the Interior has the Yukon River grinding to a halt and residents settling in for winter.
October 2008 went down as Fairbanks’ fourth-coldest October on record since 1904, according to meteorologist Rick Thoman with the National Weather Service in Fairbanks. The average temperature of 15.1 degrees was 8.4 degrees below normal.
The coldest October on record in Fairbanks was in 1996, which had an average temperature of 13.1 degrees.
“That year we had three days in a row with lows in the mid 20s below,” Thoman recalled. “We didn’t have anything quite like that this year.
“It was just persistently below-normal temperatures rather than some great cold outbreak,” he said. “There were no records set.”
The low temperature for the month at Fairbanks International Airport, the weather service’s official measuring station in Fairbanks, was 13 below — recorded on Oct. 29 and well shy of October’s record low: 28 below, set on Oct. 27, 1935.
There were 13 days when the low temperature was zero or colder, the most sub-zero days in October since 1965, which holds the record of 14 sub-zero days in October and ranks as the second-coldest October on record.
“The number of days below zero was notable,” Thoman said.
Only two days during the month saw temperatures above normal, the result of a chinook that blew into the Interior from the Gulf of Alaska on Oct. 10-11 and pushed temperatures into the high 40s before dropping again.
Had it not been for the chinook, this October likely would have made the top three coldest Octobers on record, Thoman said. The warm blast of air also prevented Fairbanks from having one of its earliest snowpacks on record by melting about 4 inches of snow that had fallen the week before, Thoman said.
As it was, the snowpack was established on Oct. 13. Total snowfall for the month was 12.2 inches, which is just slightly above normal.
The colder weather froze Interior lakes quicker and deeper than usual, but rivers are still in the process of freezing solid, said Larry Rundquist at the National River Forecast Center in Anchorage.
The ice on the Yukon River has stopped moving in several Interior villages, including Circle, Galena, Tanana and Nulato, Rundquist reported. The ice on the Tanana River at Manley stopped running on Oct. 23, he said.
The early part of winter has been much colder this year than normal in terms of “freezing degree days,” which Rundquist said are the driver for freeze-up and ice thickness. Freezing degree days are accumulated when the average daily temperature drops below 32 degrees. One freezing degree day is the equivalent of one degree below freezing. For example, if the average daily temperature is 22 degrees, it equals 10 freezing degree days.
Fairbanks accumulated 600 freezing degree days in October this year, compared to an average of 260, Rundquist said.
In the Interior village of Eagle, on the Yukon River near the Canadian border, the coldest temperature in October was 24 below, said resident John Borg, who reports temperatures to the National Weather Service.
The Yukon River ice hasn’t frozen completely yet, but it won’t be long, Borg said.
“The ice isn’t packed in shoulder to shoulder yet,” he said by phone on Monday. “It’s got a ways to go yet. I’d say a minimum of two weeks unless we get some severe cold weather.”
Most of the 150 or so residents in the town at the end of the 160-mile Taylor Highway have settled in for the winter, he said. The road, which isn’t maintained in the winter, is pretty much impassable at this point, he said.
“Most everybody planning to be here for the winter is on this side of the summit,” he said, referring to 3,650-foot American Summit.
I think Al Gore and his gang are losing it. Liberal California voted down two climate change bills, one to increase alternative electricity generation and the other to promote natural gas vehicles. Even the wack jobs on the left coast can see AGW is a hoax designed to destroy the American economy.
Cold this bad could only be caused by man-made global warming.
Paging ALGORE!....Paging ALGORE!
River is moving again in Eagle, thermometer reads plus 25 at 7 am, regular heatwave; hope we have a warm November. Get outside and enjoy this great weather, it’ll probably be minus 40 soon enough.
Poll after poll has shown that "the environment" is one of those issues that people claim to care about, but actually is a very low priority for them once they step in the voting booth.
Solar Obama Minimum
Did you read the article? Of course it is cold, but it is UNUSUALLY cold. Remember when Katrina and Rita tore through the Gulf? Gore and his minions used it to scare the hell out of people. This is the counter to their hysteria. It would be NEWS if it WASN’T cold, because then it would be all over the papers that Al Gore claims the planet is melting!
The morons forecast Great Britain would have a hot summer. The people there are asking ‘what summer’ and as their politicians debate global warming carbon taxes, the people are about ready to take them our and string them up.
Th earth has been COOLING since 1998, that is a scientific FACT that even the Al Gore’s and IPCCs of the world are being forced to admit. Thus they change their argument to saying the current cooling is natural but will soon be replaced with even worse warming. They cite computer ‘models’ as their proof, computer models where the garbage in/garbage out principle is so obvious as to be laughable.
I read the article. “Fourth coldest since 1904...etc”. It was colder than this three times in the last hundred and four years. Let algore and his propaganda die of their own fatuousness. When folks politicize the climate, for any reason, I change the channel.
Well, it may just be that the Coming Ice Age forecasted 25 or so years ago by the “leading scientists and experts” IS ON ITS WAY!!!!
Alaska is colder than usual ‘cause Sarah has been spending so much time away, in the lower 48. :)
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