Ben Townsend
Today we're joined by Rick Thoman. Rick is an Alaska Climate Specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. Rick's a familiar face around here at KNOM he does the KNOM Climate Highlight for Western Alaska, and you see him in publications throughout the region as well. Rick, thanks for joining us.
Rick Thoman
You bet, thanks for having me Ben, always good to chat.
Ben Townsend
On screen here I put the question, 'where's the snow?' And we're gonna get to that in a little bit, but it's a question that a lot of people have been asking, and a lot of people want answers to. So I wanted to bring you on to talk about that, what's going on and where's the snow?
But before we jump into that, I want to go back to last year. You wrote in a recent climate recap for Nome, for the entire year of 2024, that the average temperature for the year was 1.5 degrees above normal, which may not sound like a lot, but I'll let you expand on that. There was nearly seven inches more rain than normal, and we had one of one of the windier years in recent history. Which of those stats really stuck out to you the most?
Rick Thoman
I think overall, maybe the single most notable stat to me was the total precipitation, the rain plus the melted snow, because this has been a trend for Nome and western Alaska.
Most of the last half dozen years have seen well above the long term average precipitation, and this is, of course, exactly what we expect in a warming environment. Warming ocean, less ice cover for less of the year on the Bering Sea provides more water to evaporate into the atmosphere. That is really what I see as as maybe the single most notable statistic from 2024 for the Seward Peninsula area.
Ben Townsend
Because I know you're looking at data all the time, what were other numbers that you uncovered when you were taking a look back at last year that stuck out to you too?
Rick Thoman
One of the most interesting things that that by construction right, gets washed away in those yearly statistics are the shorter term variability. So of course, July and August were exceptionally rainy across the region, but we did have a month of summer weather in June, with temperature reaching 77 degrees in Nome.
In early June we had the largest wildfire on the Seward Peninsula since 2019, the Goldbug fire. We had, again, an incredibly stormy March and into April that we've seen repeatedly in the last few years, and that was a significant contributor to the high precipitation that we had in 2024.
But that is not, historically, what we expect. We expect late winter. Early spring is often, you know, day after day of clear weather, great for being out in the country. The snow is good, and we've just had this run of really wet late winter, early springs, really, quite, quite dramatic.
Going back to that less ice on the Bering Sea, warmer water, more evaporation... so helping to fuel that storminess at a time of year when it was not typical previously. So I think some of that shorter term variability, whether it's individual days or on out even to months, is an important part of the story because that's, of course, the scale that we live in, right? We have to live through every single day.
Ben Townsend
I remember 2019, 2020 were warmer too in this region, but then it kind of cooled off for a couple years. Is 2024 an outlier, or is this part of a larger trend that you're seeing, you know, over the larger climate record?
Rick Thoman
2024 kind of reverted back to close to what we would expect in our warming climate. The outliers were really, especially 2021 but also 2022 to some extent. 2023 were below that increasing average.
2024 we kind of rebounded back up to about what we would expect, certainly not at the level that we saw in the late 2010s. But if you ask me, 'what's going to be the average temperature for 2026 in Nome?' Okay, the only answer is to go with that long term time changing average, and it'd be very close to what we had for 2024 as a whole.
Ben Townsend
I've seen some people that are going on social media saying, 'Okay, but it's an El Niño year'. What's your assessment on that and how it fits into that cycle, too?
Rick Thoman
So it turns out that the that El Niño and La Niña are not big players for western Alaska.
We started out 2024 in an El Niño, but for Alaska, not just the Nome area, but really for Alaska overall, it was not a typical El Niño winter at all. There were big swings between warm and cold, stormy and dry, during the first few months of 2024 and then, of course, the El Niño faded away in in the spring. And so we've been in neither El Niño nor La Niña for most of 2024.
Ben Townsend
It was so, so rainy, July, August. And this was my first summer here, so I was kind of disappointed.
I want to fast forward to present day, the thing I wanted to get to is, where's the snow, right? We had a little dusting last night but really, outside, it's mostly ice. The roads are covered in ice and it's mid- January at this point. What's going on? Where's the snow?
Rick Thoman
Well, mostly the snow is not in Alaska. A large chunk of the state had a pretty below normal average fall and winter. So far for snow the major exceptions are parts of the interior and parts of the North Slope.
But in western Alaska, most places are running well below normal, and that, of course, was compounded in the Nome area and the YK-Delta in December.
Not only did we have that extreme heat in Nome and Kotzebue setting all time December record highs, but in Nome, of course, we had rain that helped melt what thin snow pack we had.
In addition to the warm temperatures we can we can pin some of this just on the variability of the weather during December. High pressure aloft, was anchored over basically eastern Chukotka, and that more or less kept most of the storms out of the northern Bering Sea.
So yes, we had a couple of small events that came through, including the rain event in Nome, but overall, the storm track has been along the Aleutians. Really much of the fall and winter storm track has been more into the Gulf of Alaska. So Nome has been on the dry side of those storms.
To get lot of precipitation, we really need to get those storms into the central and northern Bering Sea. So the weather front, with their large scale precipitation, can bring snow to the region. That has not really happened, at least since since the storm in October, and as of this recording, we do not see that happening yet. Sooner or later, it probably will, but not in the immediate future.
Ben Townsend
Historically, looking out over the past few decades, what does that usually tell us about what the rest of the winter is going to look like?
Rick Thoman
That's a great question. It has been a long time since we've had this little of snow in the Nome area at this point in the season. Probably have to go back, really, to the winter of 1969-1970, to find one quite this low. There's been some other ones that have been fairly low, but maybe not quite to this level.
Now, the thing about western Alaska is winter is long. So yes, it's mid January, but there's still a solid three, three and a half months of the snow season to go. So there's still time to get a significant snow and pin hope, if you will, on the fact that we have had this frequently- lots of precipitation and stormy weather in the late winter and spring that's brought us snow.
For most of the years since 2018, sea ice extent on the Bering Sea is still below normal. So we've got more ocean exposed. There's no indication that that's going to change dramatically. The ice will continue to expand south, but it doesn't look like it's going to be anything unusual.
So there is, is that potential, if we have another stormy and hence snowy late winter spring, that we could wind up with some decent snow cover by the time we get say to Iditarod. At this point, though, we're late enough in the season we're unlikely to have a super large snow season overall but we could claw back to normal if we see a turn to sustained Bering Sea storms that are moving north and bringing that moisture to the Nome area.
Ben Townsend
I've been talking to some of my contacts at Iditarod and Iron Dog saying, 'hey, things aren't looking good out here. Are you guys having to change plans at all?' and they're still full steam ahead. Locals will tell you, 'Okay, you know, February, that's when a lot of the snow tends to show up'.
Rick Thoman
Yeah, there's still plenty of time to get that snow. If we get to another month down the road and we haven't had significant snow, then we can start to worry. But at the moment, we've got time. We have time to be patient.
Ben Townsend
The other thing that I think people are losing patience over is the sea ice.
Just last week Koyuk had to postpone a basketball tournament because people couldn't snowmachine over the ice to get to the tournament from the nearby villages. And then I just want to be sure I mentioned that just this week, a 15-year-old tragically died after falling through the ice on the Kuskokwim. So this poses serious safety risks, not having the ice be as stable and firm as it typically would be this time of year.
What are you seeing on your side, particularly with the satellite views and some of the data you have access to?
Rick Thoman
Certainly as as the tragic event on the Kusko showed, just because we've got some cold weather, as everyone in western Alaska knows, river ice can be very tricky. There are places where typically the ice is thin or non-existent, and folks know about them.
But in our changing environment and just from, you know, year to year differences, where those weak areas in the ice or open water are can change. And folks really need to be cautious.
This is where, of course, elder expertise is invaluable in knowing the safe routes. And it's important just because it's cold this morning doesn't mean all of a sudden the river has become safe, certainly for sea ice.
With the ice pushing south, still quite far from the Pribilof Islands, has not yet made it to Saint Matthew Island for the Norton Sound area. One of the concerning things that I'm seeing with all this north to northeast wind that we've had frequently the last several weeks, of course, keeps pushing that ice away from the shore.
Most areas have some shorefast ice, but beyond that fairly narrow shorefast ice, that ice is being pushed around. This is not dissimilar to what we saw in the late winter of 2022 when we had lots and lots of persistent, sustained, strong east and northeast winds that kept moving the ice out.
And so we had poor ice conditions in Norton Sound and indeed in much of the northern Bering Sea, even as the ice edge pushed to south of St Paul. And so that mobilized the ice, of course, forming later these days than it did in the late 20th century. So we've got less of that shorefast ice, it's more susceptible to break off. And the ice that's in open Norton Sound is, of course, thinner. It's forming much later than it would have say, 30-40 years ago. And so it's moved around by the wind and and so we wind up with these relatively poor ice conditions in Norton Sound regardless of where the the edge of the ice is in the central Bering Sea.
Ben Townsend
I was driving back into town along the coastline and took a couple pictures and videos that I was going to email to you. I just hadn't made the time for that, so I'm glad we got connected today. It's real sharp, real chunky ice, not anything you'd want to walk over, certainly not even snow machine over, because there's just no fresh snow smoothing it out.
Rick Thoman
That's certainly a big problem with this lack of snow, both on the ocean and on the rivers, even where it's frozen. It's pretty rough stuff, and very difficult to travel on at all. Just an extra reason to be extra cautious.
Ben Townsend
So in closing, Rick, what's your message for people that are wondering, what does all this mean? Where are we going?
Rick Thoman
We've got to play the hand we've been dealt. And as everyone knows, with weather we can see dramatic changes in the weather pattern fairly quickly, so hope for snow is not lost. It's only January.
But I think it is important to understand this is all, of course, part of those long term trends, as you mentioned, trend to warmer, trend to wetter. Even though we can't seem to buy a storm right now, this is a transient part of that of the climate system. This year to year variability doesn't go away in a warmer and wetter world.
For us, we'll just have to see what the rest of the season brings us. But whatever it brings us, we want to stay stay safe and healthy throughout it all.
Ben Townsend
Rick, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing some of your knowledge. I'm really grateful you're a resource for all of us here. Thank you.
Rick Thoman
You bet. Great to talk to you, Ben.
Rick Thoman regularly posts in the Facebook group, Seward Peninsula/Bering Strait Weather and Climate Info. You can also subscribe to Thoman's Substack blog for more in-depth climate insights for all of Alaska here.
