The following is a transcript from Rick Thoman’s weekly “Climate Highlight for Western Alaska” provided to KNOM Radio. Thoman is a Climate Specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Aug 28: Rick Thoman’s Climate Highlight for Western Alaska

The September outlook from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center favors warmer than normal temperatures for the month overall, but neither above nor below normal precipitation is favored. Now, for reference, the September average high temperature at Nome is 49 degrees, the average low 37. Temperatures over the decades in September have varied from as high as 71 in 1979 to as low as nine above in 1992.

Now, September is the last month of the western Alaska rainy season. Average total precipitation just over two inches at Nome. In past years, September totals have ranged from seven and a half inches in 1986 to just six one hundredths of an inch in 2008 while the first snow flurries of the season typically occur in September.

Accumulating snow at Nome airport happens only about one year in three. September's note is, of course, much more common at higher elevations of the Seward Peninsula.

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