May 6, 2026 - Alaska Climate Summary

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-09

[00:00:06]Well, welcome back everybody. It is time once again for a monthly recap where we go over uh temperatures and precipitation across the state of Alaska from the prior month. So, today is May 6th. My name is Brian Brett Schneider. I am a senior climate scientist with the National Weather Service Alaska region and we're going to go over our April 2026 data.

[00:00:30]So let's first start with how we did daytoday throughout the month. And you know we kind of jumped up and down a little bit. Now the way the y axis is set is set it makes it look like these are big uh jumps up and down but in reality it wasn't. And the the theme of this month for temperatures really is unremarkable.

[00:00:52]There's just not a lot that we're going to remember about temperatures in April 2026.

[00:00:59]uh for very long quite frankly, but we got to run through the numbers. So, let's do it together.

[00:01:06]So, this chart shows or this shows what the highest and lowest temperatures were across the state at major stations. Um most places here's Anchorage 50, Fairbanks 56, Juno 55. Most areas in the 50 to 55 range. Over here in southwest Alaska, Bethl only the mid40s. Um, Gnome, Katsubu, low 40s for the lowest temperature. Uh, almost everyone, well, about half the places got below zero at some point. Uh, Fairbanks, not quite plus three. Um, here's Katsub minus3.

[00:01:46]Uh, minus 18. Statewide, highest temperature 65 at the Thorn Bay Cooperative Station down in southeast on April 27th and the lowest was minus 38 at the Port Alcan Cooperative Station on April 7th. So quite a quite a big range.

[00:02:04]Of course, we're getting later into the season, higher sun angle, less snow. All these are going up. So these should be pretty different when we look at it next month. How about daily records?

[00:02:17]really got to squint hard to look for daily records. There were very few around the state. Okay, here at Dead Horse, they had three times they had a a cold high temperature, one time a warm low temperature. Um, but that's really about it. Upg one day and a record high minimum, and just a couple scattered ones here and there. uh you really have to go back quite a long ways to find a month that had fewer records. I mean, it's a big state and usually there's there's something unusual happening here and there at a couple different places that you end up looking back and say, "Oh, there's a couple records there. I didn't even know about it." But not this month.

[00:03:01]Just very very few.

[00:03:04]All right. So, let's look at the map we showed in mid-March for what we expected to happen in the month of April. And this is the monthly outlook from the climate prediction center. And it showed equal chances of above or below for most the state with only a warm tilt from uh Seward Peninsula and then the uh western half of the north slope of Alaska. But really there wasn't much to go on. So uh we we said at the time in mid-March really kind of anything is possible for most areas.

[00:03:41]Okay. So how did we end up doing in the month of April? Well, let's first look at our time series here and we are now this is this is a trend line not a normal line but we ended up almost exactly on normal. Remember that first slide where we looked at the bumps up and down for each day. Okay, you average all those out and it was only just tiny tiny bit below normal. So basically an exactly normal month. um very much unlike April 2023 which was so cold and from a ranking point of view again it's kind of a middle of the pack April across most of the state from as far as departures from normal um here on the north slope that's where we had our greatest departures you know we were uh four to over five degrees below normal um most areas from you know the eastern interior here down through south central and southwest are in a light shade of blue. The um the the northwestern part of the state, the west coast was generally in some shade of yellow. Southeast was in it was still here in gray. Um and again here the net is minus or.3 degrees below normal. And when we we classify that into our above normal, near normal, below normal thirds, most estate here is in this white kind of near-n normal. So again, unremarkable as far as temperatures go. What about precipitation? So this was our forecast from the climate prediction center for the month of April that was issued in mid-Marchch and it shows along the west coast a slight uh signal for being wetter than normal. Everywhere else no signal. So we call that equal chances.

[00:05:32]There's an equal chance of it being above above normal, near normal or below normal. And how did we do? Actually statewide we were we were pretty wet.

[00:05:43]Now, last April was the record wetest.

[00:05:46]Um, but April 2026 was high-end wet month for sure. So, April is normally a pretty dry month statewide, but not this not this year. It was quite wet. And from a ranking point of view, most of the state, these dark greens are like a a third wetest. this lighter shade of green um fourth through 11th wetest out of 87 years. So most the state even a few of these blues which are first and second wetest as a percent of normal uh anywhere in any shade of blue here is at least 200% of normal. So that's twice normal and these dark blues are two and a half times normal and anything in the green is at least 105% of normal. So the north slope was dry, southeast was dry, and maybe the eastern Kenai and Kodiak was dry. Every place else was pretty darn wet for the month of April. So that's um uh very much like last April, even though last April was wetter.

[00:06:54]March, the previous month, very dry across the state. So I I didn't do it, but I suspect if you add April and March together, it probably ended up being about somewhere near normal. Our classification groupings, most estate is in this green. That's the upper third of the dis statistical distribution. So above normal, much above normal, only the north slope and again southeast and Kodiak was something below normal.

[00:07:26]How about our snow? Well, of course, in April, we still get snow at times. Um, but we're well into the melt season by the month of April. So, how do we do on the first of April? This is our snow water equivalent map. Um, and again, most of the state, most the western half of the state fairly below normal, eastern interior and north slope above normal. How did we end the month?

[00:07:54]We ended the month uh with a little bit less of these signals here. So, a little bit less of the below normal here and more of the above normal. Now, something important to keep in mind is normal snow water drops all through the month of April, right? So if you if you're a little bit colder than normal for a period of time and you hang on to that even though you're not increasing your amount of snow, the percent of normal actually goes up because your normal is dropping down that you know mathematically your denominator is getting smaller. So the the equation the the answer to the equation gets larger.

[00:08:37]So, lot of snow compared to normal uh here from the central interior all the way to the eastern interior and into the Yukon territory of Canada.

[00:08:48]And then finally, sea ice.

[00:08:51]April 1st, again, the Bearing Sea, and we talked about this the last two months, Bearing Sea, the eastern bearing had very, very uh high ice totals. We started the month with ice past St. Paul down to St. George and all the way out the Alaska Peninsula 826,000 square kilometers. Um normal is only 674,000 square kilometers. That's how we started the month and we ended the month during the bearing chakurt still iced over. So we don't we're not going to even focus on that. 438,000 normal is 500,000. So we started the month of April significantly above normal for ice in the bearing particularly the eastern bearing. We ended the month of April below normal not a lot but somewhat you know uh 61,000 uh square kilometers which is about 18% below normal for the month. So it's really retreating and melting fast right here. So, it'll be interesting to see how this progresses through the month of May and into June. All right, that's our April recap. Um, we again, it was not that interesting from the point of view of temperatures. It was pretty interesting from the point of precipitation, although we didn't end up with any flooding or any kind of noteworthy precipitation events. Um, right at the very end of the month, breakup just started. Um, so we're going to talk a lot more about that, of course, when we do our monthly recap for the month of May here in about four weeks. So until then, uh, please hit like and subscribe. I thank you for joining us and we will be back, uh, here in a few weeks with the, um, the month of June outlook and in about four weeks with our May recap. Thank you and see you next time.