No white Christmas for Nome and the region
It’s the turn of the New Year and there’s barely any snow on the ground. Nome did not get a white Christmas this year. The tundra is brown instead of slumbering under a blanket of white snow.
The surrounding roads are ice-glazed and devoid of the sound of snowmachines.
Winter trails are non-existent and thoughts of skiing, dog mushing and traveling by snow mobile remain wishful thinking.
This is particularly notable because it has not been a dry December. It has not even been in the top twenty driest Decembers in Nome, according to Rick Thoman, Alaska Climate Specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Nearly all the precipitation that fell in the second week of the month was rain, leaving Nome in its current snowless state.
“This is probably the lowest snow cover for this time of year for the Nome area, probably since 2002 or so,” said Thoman. In 2002, two days after Christmas, there were two inches of snow on the ground. “You know, looking at the pictures from around Nome, it doesn’t look like the average is two inches at this point,” Thoman said.
It might be the least amount of snow for this time of year since 1969, according to some old-timers Thoman had been speaking to.
The unusual weather has real impacts on the community. Travel between Nome and villages is yet impossible to do by snowmachine. River and creek crossings are sketchy.
Mushers are unable to train their dogs as usual, which could have implications for the 100-year anniversary celebration of the Serum Run, coming at the end of this month, and other races planned for this year.
“We were getting solid miles on until the beginning of December, but the rain and warm temps left us with an ice-skating rink on our usual training loops,” said Sarah Richards, Nome Kennel Club board member. “Not only do we not have snow for sleds, our options for training the dogs using ATVs is also limited because of the icy conditions.”
The Nome Kennel Club has planned a commemorative run from Safety to Nome to celebrate the Serum Run Centennial. “Our first race is in just a few weeks, but I’m not sure we’ll have the snow for it by then. I keep telling everyone to do a snow dance or two,” said Richards.
Subsistence crabbers haven’t been able to get out on the sea ice, which has been unstable and broken up by strong winds.
“If [crabbers] can get their machines out to the ice, you can go drill some holes, but the ice right now is not all that stable, and I haven’t had any reports of anybody actually out fishing yet,” said Kevin Clark, the regional area management biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
The slick ice earlier this month made roads treacherous to travel on, so the City of Nome’s Public Works crew has been putting sand down, but they haven’t needed to clear the roads of snow like usual.
“We’re not working a lot of overtime,” joked Chris Schuneman, the city’s roadcrew foreman. “We’re enjoying our weekends off.”
Shauntel Bruner-Alvanna, the director of Nome’s Chamber of Commerce, said that if the lack of snow had an effect on Nome’s economy, the data for that wouldn’t be available for several months. She said she had not heard anything anecdotally.
The weird weather has been driven by several factors: Low sea ice meant a “heating blanket of water,” which helped warm up early December, according to Thoman. The month was around twelve degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average, with record breaking temperatures early in the month.
In addition to the lack of snow, there were days of high winds around Christmas with gusts reaching 70 miles per hour at Gambell.
“The peak winds are not terribly exceptional,” said Thoman. “What does seem really unusual to me is the long duration.” He explained that windstorms lasting several days were more common in February and March, not in the early winter. Still, he said, the lack of snow was the highlight.
The Climate Prediction Center favors “above normal” precipitation for the week of January 4 through 10, which could, if true, provide Nome with some much-needed snow.