> No, you don't have to worry about cooling. All you have to worry about is
> will you thaw in the spring.
That will probably be the case next year. This year was very unusual
and we set multiple temperature and dryness records here in the
Anchorage region. A localized high pressure dome set up over the Cook
Inlet and blocked the normal flow of moisture and winds from the east.
The Chugach Mountains form a wall to our east and keeps the moisture
in Prince William Sound. Once the weather system gets enough depth, it
spills over the top and streams down through the glacier valleys into
the west side of the Chugach. But this year, the high pressure dome
provided an invisible wall that stood taller than the weather system.
I could literally see it raining several miles to the east of our
house, but it was bone dry at home. It was that way all summer.
And then the smoke... We had big forest fires all around us, and the
dome kept all other airflows away, so it just pooled up. There were
days when it was like driving in fog. Absolutely horrid air-quality.
It was hot (90s), dry, smoky, and no air-conditioning.
Climate change? We have to be careful about conflating "weather" with
"climate". Unusually hot and dry summers like this happen every 15
years or so in just about every region of Alaska. While we were
cooking and choking, the Fairbanks area was getting record rains and
was cool. Localized weather phenomena can be influenced by climate
over the long run, but is more likely influenced by the specific
arrangements of long-term cycles that happen to coincide in given
years. All we had to do was drive through the tunnel to Whittier and
everything was opposite.
AK Schnozz
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