67-degree day sets December record

In a holiday season of extreme weather events, this one stands out: a 67-degree Fahrenheit reading in Alaska the day after Christmas.

The reading Sunday, from a tidal station on Kodiak Island, set a statewide temperature record for December, the National Weather Service reported.

The temperature at the station, in southern Alaska, reached the 60s again Monday before falling to 55 degrees Tuesday morning, Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy in Fairbanks, said on Twitter.

“In late December,” he added, “I would not have thought such a thing possible.”

It wasn’t the only weather record to fall this month in towns along the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea. A 56-degree day Dec. 25 in the town of Unalaska, Alaska, appeared to be the state’s highest-ever reliable temperature reading for Christmas Day, Thoman wrote.

Tying a single heat wave to climate change requires extensive analysis, but scientists say it is abundantly clear that heat waves around the world are growing more frequent, longer lasting and more dangerous.

New purported weather records are piling up so quickly that it can be hard for civilians to keep track — or to decide how much to worry. Nineteen of the world’s 20 warmest years have occurred this century; last year effectively tied 2016 as the hottest on record.

This year the average temperature for the contiguous United States on Christmas was the third warmest since 1900, according to an analysis by Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist in Alaska.

Record heat in Alaska is especially notable because the state is known for its bitter cold and its proximity to the Arctic.

Alaska’s latest heat wave did not affect the entire state.

Thoman, the climatologist in Fairbanks, shared a photo on Tuesday of a bleak twilight in the northern Alaskan town of Nuiqsut. He said the temperature there was minus 40 degrees.

“Winter lives,” he wrote.