Fairbanks summers are trending toward more precipitation. June 2020 set two rainfall records for the Fairbanks area.
After a cold winter and spring, high temperatures around the Interior prompted birch tree buds to burst, sending record-setting levels of pollen into the air.
According to the Weather Service, the Chena River is at 25 feet around Chena Lakes and 21.4 feet at the Mile 40 Bridge near Two Rivers.
Fairbanks' May 10 temperature was two degrees below the daily record, while snow melt from an above-normal year is flooding Interior rivers.
Mosquito populations have decreased in some areas, perhaps due to changes in the surrounding vegetation or weather.
During a summer of unusually warm temperatures, highbush cranberries (Viburnum edule) are blooming, using buds that would have normally bloomed next spring.
Local beekeepers suspect pesticides used for controlling mosquitoes may be the cause.
Smoke and soot from central Alaska wildfires have afflicted the subarctic city of Fairbanks with some of the world's worst air pollution in recent days, forcing many residents indoors and prompting one hospital to set up a "clean air shelter."
This morning I heard and saw a robin in Fairbanks right near the fairgrounds. I have lived in Fairbanks for more than 30 years and have never seen a robin this early!
Warm temperatures are rapidly melting snow and creating ice, which creates difficult conditions for dog mushers. Migratory birds are arriving early, and a mosquito emerged months early. Small owls dead around the Goldstream Valley that looked unusually thin.
Warm air temperatures have melted the snow, leaving the soil without the insulation that snowcover usually provides.
After a record-low last winter, the birds are making a comeback. Redpolls, seen in two varieties in Alaska — the common and the hoary — have attracted scientists’ attention because the birds survive super-cold temperatures. Physiologist Laurence Irving ranked redpolls’ feathers just behind pine grosbeaks for “apparent usefulness for insulation.”Redpolls have a secret weapon other small birds, including chickadees, don’t possess: food pouches on each side of their necks.
The Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy calculated that, as of Wednesday, a total of 0.7 inches of snow had fallen at Fairbanks International Airport, making this the least snowy year here since 1926.
Uncommon coyote sighting in the Interior.
With Halloween just over a week out, Fairbanks is looking at the potential of a third straight year with minimal snow cover, and a possible first ever green Halloween.
For the first time in more than a century with no recorded snow -- not even a trace -- this late in October, as of Tuesday the 16th. On top of that, warm weather across the state is setting marks for the latest freeze date on record.
“It’s an area that I and some other colleagues have started thinking about: can you get methane forming in terrestrial environments? But it’s a very new area of science,” carbon scientist Katey Walter Anthony said.
Front page of the Daily News-Miner documents a late blooming rose during a colder than average August.
Transportation engineers moved the road to avoid a giant mass of frozen debris sliding downhill.
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