A dismal amount of snow fell on Southcentral Alaska last month. But if you look over the whole year, the state actually saw more precipitation than normal, much of it in the summer.
As part of our Ask a Climatologist segment, National Weather Service climate researcher Brain Brettschneider says the low December snowfall was a bit of a surprise.
Below is the transcript of an interview with Brettschneider on Alaska News Nightly. It has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Brian Brettschneider: Who would have guessed? After the end of October we were, I think, a top five snowfall season to date. But now, as we stand here at the end of the year, we're about 6 or 7 inches below normal for the season. So it's been quite a turn of events.
Wesley Early: What exactly happened there?
BB: It stopped snowing. (laughs) The pattern changed. The overall flow of the atmosphere brought in warm temperatures and the flow is not really good for precipitation in Southcentral. So like, even if you look in here in December, almost 40% of our precipitation has been liquid rain. And, you know, that's not very common for the month of December.
WE: Yeah, I noticed it kind of looked like breakup season for a good chunk of December, and the roads looked like, you know, you're driving on the moon. I'm curious, while snowfall has been low, have temperatures also been kind of higher than normal? I know that there's not a direct correlation.
BB: Again, this is a great example of how we try to make extrapolations early in the season; we’re often prone to wild errors. So November was pretty cool statewide. And you know, we were still doing pretty good on snowfall, but December has really flipped a switch. So we're going to end up with a top 10 warmest December statewide. Here in Anchorage will be about 6 or 7 degrees warmer than normal for the month, a top 10 warmest December here locally, as well many other parts of the state running 3 to 8 degrees above normal for the month, and really no area has been below normal so far. So just like with snowfall, the temperature is really kind of flipped, changed on a dime.
WE: While low snowfall might be nice for Anchorage’s snowplows, after a couple years of record seasons, does it have any indications for the rest of the season?
BB: In general, not really. We've already seen two different weather regimes. We went from cool and snowy to warm and not snowy. Now the outlook for the next month looks to be kind of a carbon copy of what we've seen so far in December. So if you're expecting a return to cold in January, you're going to be disappointed, I'm afraid. But you know, beyond that, it's hard to say. The guidance still is trying to paint us as cool, but it's been doing that for a long time, and it really hasn't worked out so far.
WE: Can you talk about how this year looked overall, for temperatures and I guess general climate phenomena?
BB: Well, I think it's important to step back globally. So globally, 2024 will be the warmest year on record, and it breaks the record that was set in 2023. So we actually are a little bit in our little bubble here. Alaska is going to be maybe 17th, 18th, 19th warmest year in the last century. So certainly, you know, in that top 20% of warm years, but compared to the rest of the globe, where we kind of got off lucky this year. And as far as precipitation, it’s been a pretty wet year, particularly in the summer months. July and August were the wettest July-August on record statewide, and we're looking at a top 10 wettest year overall. So really warm, but not excessively warm and wet. Maybe not record wet, but warm and wet is kind of the story for 2024
WE: Were there sort of big weather stories, big weather topics that you think emerged this year?
BB: Well, every year we have extreme events, and we certainly had a number of them here in 2024. Some examples would be the Juneau Suicide Basin glacial outburst flood, which had the highest flood stage on record. We had the Ketchikan landslide. Kotzebue had their highest storm surge flooding on record. Bethel had their highest breakup river level since 2005. And on the eastern North Slope, if people remember back in early August, it hit 89 degrees in Deadhorse. And even just across the Canadian border, they were into the mid 90s, you know, at 70 degrees latitude. So, a couple of really outstanding, remarkable events this year. And as many of the listeners know, you know, in a warming world, these kinds of extreme events are going to become more likely. And so we should kind of be prepared for more of these moving forward.
