Climate Watch
The 2021-22 cold season (November through March) was memorable across western Alaska, but perhaps the most outstanding feature was the repeated flip-flops in temperatures, rain and snow, winds and ice conditions across the area.
The first significant snowstorm of the winter occurred November 1 -2 followed by a rapid plunge into mid-winter-like cold. Every day between November 3 and December 4 was colder than normal, and not just by a little bit: the daily temperature at Nome averaged 15°F colder than normal during this time.
However, the first of several changes in the storm track brought sustained stormy weather to the region starting on December 4, with no less than six separate storms during December, including freezing rain on eight days at the Nome airport. The month was capped off by the storm on December 28, when severe winds caused power outages as ice encrusted powerlines failed in wind gusts to near or even above hurricane force. At the Nome Airport, the peak wind of 70 mph was the highest gust since the 1970s.
Every month except December had significantly less precipitation —rain plus melted snow— than normal, and the number of days with precipitation over the five months was below normal. However, December was the wettest on record and had so much precipitation that the November through March precipitation total was 13 percent above normal. In fact, nearly half of the five-month total precipitation fell in two weeks December 15-29.
As we moved into the new year, winds became the major weather feature. Strong east to northeast winds not directly associated with a storm buffeted the region on January 9, but that was just a warm-up for the extreme east winds February 1-3. Schools closed in Unalakleet and Nome due to the threat of blowing debris. Unalakleet had a three-day average wind speed of 45 mph with a peak wind of 74 mph.
There were several additional episodes of strong east winds the rest of February and early March that further polished the glazed snowpack and wreaked havoc with sea ice in Norton Sound, repeatedly pushing mobile ice out into the eastern Bering (where it then moved south) and then started the ice formation from scratch. The result was that except for some narrow areas of shorefast ice, most of Norton Sound had one or more days with open water during March. As we head into spring that means that ice in northeast Bering Sea is mostly thin new ice and unless it’s a sustained cold spring, the sea ice will melt out early.