Much of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta has been above freezing for at least a week – far above normal temperatures for this time of the year. At the Bethel airport, for example, temperatures in the first three weeks of January were, on average, 13 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
But Alaska climate specialist Rick Thoman said that this is far from record-breaking warmth.
“When we look at the first three weeks of January in Bethel climate history going back a century, this actually isn’t even in the top 10 warmest first three weeks of the year,” Thoman said.
The temperature itself isn’t as notable as the lack of snowpack and heavy rains that have doused the region so far this year.
“Precipitation is running well above normal in Bethel. But, of course, nearly all of that has fallen as rain, and that’s really the most significant thing that we’re seeing across the Y-K Delta: most places have very low to almost no snowpack,” Thoman said. “Some of that, of course, is not just what’s happened this month, but the mild weather and the rain in December as well. Many places had something of a snowpack, but then it got washed away by the mild weather and rain.”
No place in the Kuskokwim drainage has “anything like […] normal snowpack,” Thoman said. And it’s been a decade since the Y-K Delta saw this sort of pattern of above-normal precipitation, low snow and low snowpack.
As the weather shifts to significantly colder temperatures at the end of the month, Thoman said that there are a few shorter- and longer-term impacts the region could see from this warm, wet January.
In the shorter-term, pipes may be more susceptible to freezing without the insulating effect of accumulated snow.
Looking toward spring and summer, if the low snowpack trend continues, Thoman said that there could be a lower chance of flooding come breakup time, with less to melt off – although there’s still always a chance of ice jam flooding.
“The big concern, of course, if we maintain this very low snowpack, if there’s not much snow to melt and we wound up with early snow melt and then a warm, dry spring like we had in 2019, obviously, that ups the wildfire risk for the Y-K Delta,” Thoman said.
For the time being, the Kuskokwim Ice Road is closed to travel, with overflow and large cracks reported both upriver and downriver from Bethel. And Thoman said that it’ll take more than just a couple of days of cold to make it navigable again.
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