Extreme negative temperatures out-number extreme positive temperatures on the planet today, with a spread of over 100ºF. Eagle airport in upper Alaska on the Yukon River is one such example:
Source: http://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/PAEG.html
No word yet on whether this is a new record low temperature. And there’s more… From this list at CoolWx, which seems to be behind in reporting (h/t Ryan Maue):
0 stations reporting temperature -55°C or colder
0 stations reporting temperature -50°C to -54°C
2 stations reporting temperature -45°C to -49°C
- CYOC: Old Crow Airport, Canada [-45°C, -49.0°F]
CYOC 261900Z 00000KT 20SM IC PRFG FEW010 M45/M49 A3029 RMK ST1 FROIN VIS NE 5/8 SW 5/8 WND ESTD SLP314
- PAEG: Eagle, Eagle Airport, AK, United States [-45.°C, -49.0°F]
PAEG 261932Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM SCT026 M46/ A3018 RMK AO2 T1456 TSNO
14 stations reporting temperature -40°C to -44°C
- CWEU: Eureka, NT, Canada [-43°C, -45.4°F]
CWEU 261800Z 00000KT 15SM SKC M43/M45 A2974 RMK SLP074
- CYLK: Lutsel KE, NT, Canada [-40°C, -40.0°F]
CYLK 261600Z 07004KT 15SM VCFG FEW100 M40/M43 A3002 RMK AC1 SLP203
- CYUS: Shepherd Bay, NT, Canada [-40°C, -40.0°F]
CYUS 261900Z AUTO 17005KT CLR M40/ A2966 RMK SLP055
- CYVQ: Norman Wells, NT, Canada [-43°C, -45.4°F]
CYVQ 261700Z 00000KT 5SM IC BR FEW090 SCT270 M43/M47 A3028 RMK AC2CI1 SLP269
- PABI: Delta Junction/Ft Greely, Allen Army Airfield, AK, United States [-40°C, -40.0°F]
PABI 261708Z 00000KT 5SM BR CLR M40/M42 A2994 RMK AO2
- PABT: Bettles, Bettles Airport, AK, United States [-43°C, -45.4°F]
PABT 261925Z 00000KT 10SM FEW001 M43/ A3020 RMK AO2 PNO
- PAEI: Fairbanks, Eielson AFB, AK, United States [-42°C, -43.6°F]
PAEI 261713Z AUTO 16003KT 2 1/2SM R32/3500FT BR CLR M42/ A3004 RMK AO2 VIS 2 1/2V4 $
- PAGA: Galena, Edward G. Pitka Sr. Airport, AK, United States [-41.°C, -41.8°F]
PAGA 261858Z AUTO 00000KT 1 1/2SM BR CLR M42/ A3018 RMK AO2 SLP230 T1417 FZRANO PNO $
- PAML: Manley Hot Springs, Manly Hot Springs Airport, AK, United States [-44°C, -47.2°F]
PAML 261755Z 00000KT 5SM BR FEW000 M44/ A3013 RMK FEW000 NW-NE NOSPECI
- PANN: Nenana, Nenana Municipal Airport, AK, United States [-42.°C, -43.6°F]
PANN 261934Z AUTO 00000KT 3/4SM BR VV002 M43/ A3006 RMK AO2 T1428 TSNO
- PAOR: Northway, Northway Airport, AK, United States [-40.°C, -40.0°F]
PAOR 261553Z 00000KT 5SM BR BCFG BKN011 BKN065 M40/ A2991 RMK AO2 SLP256 T1400
- PARC: Arctic Village, Arctic Village Airport, United States [-41°C, -41.8°F]
PARC 261916Z AUTO 00000KT 2SM CLR M41/ A3003 RMK AO1
- PATA: Tanana, Calhoun Memorial Airport, AK, United States [-41.°C, -41.8°F]
PATA 261752Z 00000KT 10SM CLR M41/ A3015 RMK AO2 SLP225 T1411 11400 21417 53007
- PFYU: Fort Yukon, Fort Yukon Airport, AK, United States [-43°C, -45.4°F]
PFYU 261739Z 00000KT 3SM BR FEW002 SCT006 M43/ A3026
0 stations reporting temperature 55°C or warmer
0 stations reporting temperature 50°C to 54°C
0 stations reporting temperature 45°C to 49°C
3 stations reporting temperature 40°C to 44°C
- SARL: Paso De Los Libres Aerodrome, Argentina [40°C, 104.0°F]
SARL 261800Z 32010KT 9999 SCT030 FEW045CB 40/22 Q1007
- SBSM: Santa Maria Aero-Porto, Brazil [40°C, 104.0°F]
SBSM 261900Z 19006KT 9999 FEW040 40/14 Q1007
- SUSO: Salto, Uruguay [40°C, 104.0°F]
SUSO 261900Z 01010KT 9999 SCT030 40/18 Q1005
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What’s a tree-hugger to do? 😎
wind is causing trouble!
25 Dec: UK Daily Mail: Tamara Cohen: £30million for wind turbines that don’t work when it’s windy: Cost is £25million higher than last year and paid for by household bills
National Grid is unable to cope with extra power produced
At the start of September, around 40 wind farm firms were paid £2.4million
Another windy weekend in August saw £3.1million handed over
Wind farms have been paid a record £30million this year to stand idle in bad weather…
John Constable, of the Renewable Energy Foundation charity, which compiled the figures from official data, said: ‘The scale and pricing of wind power constraints in 2013 clearly shows that the full system cost of wind power is much higher than government is willing to admit.
‘Unfortunately, there are no cheap solutions, and, ironically, paying wind farms not to produce energy may actually be cheaper than building more grid.
‘At some point government will have to face the fact that wind power is simply too expensive to provide more than a minor share of UK electricity.’…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2529297/Title-goes-here.html
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Gunga Din says: What’s a tree-hugger to do? 😎
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I’m a tree hugger. I hug the parts of trees that I have been bringing in to burn in the fireplace. The dismembered pieces I cut up and in some cases split after having the trees in my yard trimmed last fall. So glad I don’t live in San Francisco there big brother has made it a crime, at the times of their choosing, for a guy to have a fire in his fireplace.
Thanks Anthony, I think.
And this is only the first week of winter!
RAH says:
December 26, 2013 at 1:45 pm
“10th Grp. did a lot of testing of equipment for Natick Labs since they were a short distance away from Ft. Devens, MA where the group HQ and 2nd and 3rd Bn. were back then.”
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“It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.“- comedian Steven Wright
I was an instructor for a time at the A.I. school @ur momisugly Devens a decade or so prior to your visit. I had a couple of friends in the 10th Group and 1 fellow spent a lot of time assisting at Natick labs. We had good times riding motorcycles and x-c skiing around New England and fraternizing with the Yankee women. Oh my, my. Oh hell yes.
Man, there were some real characters around in those days.
Late one Saturday night, right after payday, somebody knocked over the PX. They tunneled under one of those giant Massachusetts snow drifts against one side of the building and placed a shape charge neatly against the vault wall and no one heard a thing or knew who did it… well, officially, anyhow. Which Gr. was just covered up with ornery yardbirds who had knowledge of and access to… ?
By the way- the outfit I was in- we called the boys in SF “bait”, since the Army had the tendency to send ’em way out there past Ft. Apache and see if they’d draw a crowd.
Meanwhile in Western Australia, we are having a surprisingly mild post Christmas period.
RAH says:
December 26, 2013 at 1:04 pm
..” Yes I know I’m dating myself to the prehistoric times when the only TVs folks had were black & white.”
Some of us on here go way back when..! B & W. ..9 inch screen! Damn great magnifying glass in front of it and BBC closed down (with the National Anthem) every night at 10:00 p.m.! (No 24 hour clock in those days!)
Ain’t nostalgia grand?
Absolutely cool !
Good luck to you all.
RAH says: @ur momisugly December 26, 2013 at 2:17 pm
I’m a tree hugger. I hug the parts of trees that I have been bringing in to burn in the fireplace….
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We heated with wood when we lived in Leominster MA. I am sure you know where that is.
(We lost a lot of our trees to Ash Decline)
Alan Robertson says: By the way- the outfit I was in- we called the boys in SF “bait”, since the Army had the tendency to send ‘em way out there past Ft. Apache and see if they’d draw a crowd.
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Well mine was a a post Vietnam Army though I served with quite a few Vietnam vets. In the event of WW III staring with the Soviets coming through the Fulda Gap I don’t think many of us would have survived based on the objectives we were given and the missions we planned to meet those objectives. Survival is kinda questionable when the fly boys tell you it’s 50-50 if they can even get you in 500 miles behind the FEBA. Ironic thing is that though I spent my time on those Alpine and cold weather teams training for WW III, when it came to real world missions my lot was to go to places like Lebanon, Liberia, and Nigeria and work in hot third world enviroments. .
RAH says:
December 26, 2013 at 2:51 pm
“In the event of WW III staring with the Soviets coming through the Fulda Gap I don’t think many of us would have survived based on the objectives we were given and the missions we planned to meet those objectives”
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The 10th Grp. was definitely Euro- focused as you described and all the guys I knew were also trying to study a Euro language, like Polish or German or… Sometimes, they had interesting missions to places like Panama.
@ur momisugly Gail Combs
Wasn’t there a billboard around Leominster that declared it to be “Plastic Capital of the US” or “Plastic City, USA”, or some such, due to local industry?
It was kind of a joke among GIs, because in the vernacular of our age group, “plastic” was not something you wanted to be.
At Eagle AK it looks like the record low for today (26 Dec) is -56 F set back in 1961. The -50 F reported today for 4 hours at Eagle AK has come within 6 degrees of that daily record and is a whopping 34 degrees below normal for 26 December. The temperature has since risen to -49 F this afternoon. The record low temperature for the month of December is -69 F recorded on 29 Dec 1961. It has been even colder in January with -71 F on 19 January 1952 being the all-time lowest temperature recorded at Eagle AK.
It’s reports like these that make me ever so happy to live in Phoenix. (71F today)
Alan Robertson says: The 10th Grp. was definitely Euro- focused as you described and all the guys I knew were also trying to study a Euro language, like Polish or German or… Sometimes, they had interesting missions to places like Panama.
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No longer. Now their AO is the sub Sahara Africa up through the horn of Africa and into part of the ME . There is not an SF group targeted at Europe any longer.
10th group came from the original Army SF unit which was formed as a company at Flint Kasserne, Bad Tolz in Bavaria from a bunch of communist hating displaced persons from mostly Eastern Europe. I LOVED my three year tour at Bad Tolz. The Kassern is now gone except the main gate. It was built as an SS officers training school and served as Patton’s initial HQ during the post WW II occupation. Several different American divisions had their HQ there in the years after WW II. Such a shame to destroy such history. But it is history that most Germans would rather forget I believe and when the US troops left they didn’t waste too much time before tearing down the quadrangle.
The National Weather Service in Fairbanks reports a temperature of -58 F this morning (26 Dec 2013) at Chicken AK:
CHICKEN………………………………..58 BELOW
TOK……………………………………….52 BELOW
DONNELLY……………………………..50 BELOW
EAGLE…………………………………..50 BELOW
See! Extreme weather. You were warned.
Time for the US to go metric 🙂
This is not meant as a gotcha question, honest. Does anyone know of any reason why sea ice extent in the arctic is taking a downturn given these temperatures? Has there been any large storms breaking up the ice?
Alan Robertson says: December 26, 2013 at 3:03 pm
@ur momisugly Gail Combs
Wasn’t there a billboard around Leominster that declared it to be “Plastic Capital of the US” or “Plastic City, USA”, or some such, due to local industry?
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Yes, I was a chemist in one of those plastic factories. :>)
@Peter:
Hot Gulf water. 18 year lag for Pacific to drift up to Alaska. Wind from warm Russia. In about 2015 to 2016 Pacific cold is at Artic entry. Gulf stream is slowing. Russia will cool. First antarctic went to excess. After a lag Arctic will follow. This is just the start of the coldening. It gets steadily worse to about 2050…
peter says: @ur momisugly December 26, 2013 at 3:55 pm
This is not meant as a gotcha question, honest. Does anyone know of any reason why sea ice extent in the arctic is taking a downturn given these temperatures? Has there been any large storms breaking up the ice?
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Magnifying (2X) this plot seems to show the ice leveled off and then increased:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
from: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
So is record cold temperatures simply “weather”, or an effect actually caused by Global Warming, or both? What’s the excuse this time?
JB says:
December 26, 2013 at 3:51 pm
Time for the US to go metric 🙂
Why?
The metric system is based on an irrational unit, so starting with the old saw that “English” units are based on different sized feet, etc., is a non-starter.
And, any idiot can multiply and divide by 10, it isn’t a unique feature of metric.
Speaking of low temperatures, I did a stint in northern Ontario, Canada, in the early 80’s. During one particularly chilly stretch in, if I recollect accurately, January of 1982, we dropped to -62C. Not for long mind you, but long enough.
That’s just shy of 80 below F. Brisk.
Boy, talk about flashbacks! I lived in Leominster in a Motel 6 for 3 months while trying to find housing. In the ’90s, Ft. Devon was looking very forlorn, with a fraction of the former “occupation forces” still working there. Loved going to Sterling for a cheap lobster dinner…