October overall was warmer than normal across most of the region, though, in the Bering Strait it was only warmer than normal by a little. At Nome, this was the first October to have an average temperature above freezing since 2020.
Now, it was a different story on the Chukotka side of the strait. There, west of Provideniya, this was one of the coolest Octobers in the past 25 years. In fact, Chukotka and a few other areas in the Russian Far East were the only places anywhere in the Arctic that were cooler than normal last month.
For the Arctic overall, this was the mildest October of record. Because of the loss of sea ice, October temperatures in the Arctic have warmed by an average of eight degrees since the 1990s, now, the October warming has not been that dramatic in western Alaska, because historically, sea ice was not as much of a factor here as it is up north.
