Some high temperature records were set in the Interior on Monday, as the latest Chinook channeled more southerly air across the region.
Delta Junction peaked at 62 degrees, a daily record and the warmest it’s ever been there so late in the season. Eielson reached 58, and it got up to 51 in Fairbanks, all records for Oct. 28.
The air is cooling today and rain showers have given way to snow at higher elevations, where a few inches of accumulation are possible, but precipitation is likely to remain rain on lower terrain in town.
National Weather Service Climate Sciences and Services manager Rick Thoman says the late October rain is unusual.
“This is the latest in the season that we’ve ever had both plain rain and no snow on the ground,” Thoman said. “Of course there’s been rain later in the fall and in the winter when there’s snow on the ground, but this is the latest that it’s been, if you will, this September-like.”
Fairbanks is likely to experience its second snowless Halloween since official snow depth records began being kept locally back in 1930.
Thoman says the lack of snow is helping keep temperatures above the normal high of 21 and low of 6, but more winter like conditions are on the horizon.
“This is kind of the last big push of deep flow from the south across the mountain ranges and into the Interior,” Thoman said. “It does look like that as we go beyond this week that a somewhat more normal pattern with weather systems moving along from west to east.”
Thoman says there’s a chance a storm expected on the west coast later this week could send some more warm air into the Interior, but it would be short lived.
Dan Bross is a reporter at KUAC in Fairbanks.
