Climate Watch
Nome is very fortunate to have one of the longest sets of climate observations anywhere in Alaska, and we make extensive use of that priceless treasure for Climate Watch.
While daily climate observations were taken in the Gold Rush summer of 1900, Nome’s climate data history really starts in the summer of 1906, when once-a-day precipitation measurements began and daily temperatures were added on December 2, 1906.
In July 1916, Nome became what was called a Weather Bureau secondorder station, which brought additional equipment and 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. weather observations that were sent to the wider world via telegraph. These observations were taken by Nome residents in what today we would describe as a contract service. During this time the observations were made downtown.
In the summer of 1928, the observation site changed again, this time moving out of town to the old Army post at Fort Davis. However, the building was gutted by fire on Christmas Day 1929, and observations returned to the Miners and Merchants Bank Building downtown. In the late 1920s the Weather Bureau began an expansion, in part to help support the weather information needs of the burgeoning aviation ation industry, and this entailed re-placing some of the second order sta-tions with stations operated directly by Weather Bureau employees. The great Stock Market Crash of October 1929 and following national depres-sion scuttled some of the expansion plans, but Nome squeaked in before finding was cut, and in August 1930, C.J. McGregor arrived from Juneau to open the Weather Bureau office in the Rice Building.
The Weather Bureau equipment was undamaged in the great fire of September 1934 but was noted on the daily log, which was an unusual occurrence in an era, where there was little mention of anything not strictly weather related. World War II brought many changes to all of Alaska. In Nome, this included the construction of Marks Airfield north-west of town, and it was here, fol-lowing the war, that the Weather Bureau moved in the spring of 1946.
This year marks the 76th year of weather observations at what is now the Nome Airport. There, of course, have been changes in procedures, in-strumentation and even time zones that affect some details of Nome's climate observation history. The most important changes were the move to Marks Field from down-town and the automation of weather and climate observations that started in the late 1990s.
The October 2019 cessation of National Weather Service staff pro-viding any quality assurance or aug-mentation of the automated observations does not diminish the importance of the past 116 years of observations, but it does mean that future generations will not have the same resources we've had to under-stand Nome's changing climate.