November and December is the time of year when the typical day to day movements of large scale weather features, such as high and low pressure centers and weather fronts, can result in rapid and dramatic changes in the weather that we experience. In our region this is usually the result of winds turning from offshore to onshore.
As ocean water is always 29 degrees or warmer, if it were colder it would be ice, temperatures can rise 10s of degrees in just a few hours.
In mountainous areas, dramatic warming often occurs when winds blow down off of the mountains.
You may have experienced this in Anchorage, but this also happens on the inland Seward Peninsula, when south winds aloft blow across the Kigluiak and Darby mountains, and when the wind direction is just right it even happens on St. Lawrence Island too, with Savoonga especially prone to this kind of warming.
