The northernmost city in the United States and one of just a few settlements that far north on earth had its rainiest day on record on Tuesday. The same weather system also brought high winds to Fairbanks, where the infrastructure and forests rarely experience such phenomena.
Heavy rainfall is uncommon as the North Slope is a relatively dry ecosystem, with only 5.39 inches of precipitation in an average year. On Tuesday, 1.42 inches of rain fell in Utqiagvik, Alaska F/K/A Barrow. An inch of rain or slightly more has only happened twice since records began in 1920. Rainfall helps the permafrost thaw and methane released into the atmosphere.
From the Capital Weather Gang at the Washington Post:
Rick Thoman, a climate expert at the University of Alaska’s International Arctic Research Center, wrote in an email that the Utqiagvik record was yet another example of intensified precipitation in the state amid a warming climate; he said another top-10 rainfall day occurred in Utqiagvik just last September.
Alaska’s capital, Juneau, recently saw both the wettest January and February on record, while the town of Talkeetna, north of Anchorage, saw the third most precipitation of any summertime two-day period on record earlier this month. And in Fairbanks, the most populous city in the interior of Alaska, an unprecedented December deluge in 2021 made for what was by far the wettest cold-season day on record.
According to Thoman, the North Slope of Alaska — a swath of the northernmost land in the United States — has seen a significant increase in precipitation over the past 50 years. The trend “is surely tied to dramatic decrease in late summer and autumn sea ice,” he wrote. The decrease in sea ice is a well-known symptom of global warming that increases the amount of moisture available to storms in the region.
The same storm that dropped record-setting rain on Utqiagvik also slammed Fairbanks with damaging wind gusts on Monday. The city saw winds gust as high as 44 mph, while nearby Fort Greely and Delta Junction experienced gusts to 56 and 63 mph, respectively. In Fairbanks, a city unaccustomed to winds that would generally cause little damage elsewhere in the United States, the gusts felled hundreds of trees.
Thirty thousand power outages occurred in Fairbanks. The damage was pervasive and not just in the metro area of Fairbanks.
