Alaska's winter was so warm, it's shipping snow to Anchorage for the Iditarod
This winter was a no-show throughout most of Alaska, forcing officials in charge of the iconic sled dog race known as the Iditarod to bring snow by train from Fairbanks to Anchorage, where the race's ceremonial start is on Saturday.
Seven rail cars transported snow between the two cities beginning on Wednesday. A tarp will cover the snow in Anchorage in case it rains before the race begins, according to Karl Heidelbach, Iditarod Anchorage start coordinator.
The Iditarod course follows a 1,000-mile winding path across Arctic tundra to Nome. Parts of the course have been described as a sheet of ice due to melting snow and rainfall followed by cold temperatures.
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It would be hard to overstate the weirdness of this winter in America's only Arctic territory.
The Alaska Division of Forestry has already had its first wildfire call of the season, as of March 1, when there is typically several feet of snow on the ground in south-central Alaska.
According to the National Weather Service, most places in the state had a top 10 warmest winter, with Barrow -- the northernmost community in the U.S. -- as well as King Salmon and Sitka having their warmest meteorological winters on record. Meteorologists define the winter months as December through February.
"Fairbanks had, by far, the lowest precipitation (and snowfall) of any December through February in more than a century of climate observations," the NWS said.
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At the Portage Glacier Visitor's Center, which is just an hour's drive from Anchorage and a popular tourist attraction, nearly seven feet of rain "and a little melted snow" fell during the winter, the Weather Service stated in a Facebook post.
Mushers taking part in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race mushers will travel only 3 miles through Anchorage during Saturday's ceremonial start instead of the traditional 11-mile route, due to a lack of snow in the city, according to the Alaska Dispatch.
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The Iditarod has been a casualty of rapidly warming and, frankly, weirding winters in Alaska, with the 2014 and 2015 races significantly affected by a lack of snow.
Last year, the course was moved 225 miles further north to find a deep enough snow pack.
The warmth in Alaska this winter was related to an unusual combination of ocean conditions and atmospheric circulation across the equatorial tropical Pacific and the North Pacific Ocean.
With a strong El Niño event in the tropical Pacific and warmer than average waters in the Gulf of Alaska, weather systems tended to move across southern Alaska, with their circulation acting to relentlessly pump mild air into the Frontier State.
These maps show the unusual atmospheric setup.
Below, the map of wind speed and direction anomalies shows the enhanced flow of mild air from the Gulf of Alaska northward (the arrow).
This map of global average surface temperature anomalies shows that Alaska was not the only spot in the far north to be much milder than average this winter.
While this winter stands out, Alaska has been warming rapidly in recent decades due to human-caused global warming and natural climate variability.
Iditarod mushers will need to become more accustomed to low-snow, muddy and icy conditions for future races, since climate projections show that, depending on the amount and pace of greenhouse gas emissions, average annual temperatures in the state may rise by 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, with sharper increases in parts of the state.
Andrew Freedman is Mashable's Senior Editor for Science and Special Projects. Prior to working at Mashable, Freedman was a Senior Science writer for Climate Central. He has also worked as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Greenwire/E&E Daily. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, online at The Weather Channel, and washingtonpost.com, where he wrote a weekly climate science column for the "Capital Weather Gang" blog. He has provided commentary on climate science and policy for Sky News, CBC Radio, NPR, Al Jazeera, Sirius XM Radio, PBS NewsHour, and other national and international outlets. He holds a Masters in Climate and Society from Columbia University, and a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
