Weather Blog

All-time record heat in Alaska has locals sweltering

All-time record heat in Alaska has locals sweltering
A sweltering day in Valdez, Alaska when the high temperature hit 90 degrees on June 17, 2013 -- breaking their all-time record high temperature. (Photo courtesy: NOAA)

Many people head to Alaska to visit the snow-capped mountains and awe-inspiring glaciers.

Monday, sitting on a glacier might not have been a bad idea.

A major ridge of high pressure brought intense heat to south-central Alaska with four towns experiencing heat never before felt in their record-keeping history.

* Talkeetna hit 96 degrees (Old record: 91, set three dates, most recently... Sunday)
* Cordova hit 90 (Old record: 89, set July 16, 1995)
* Valdez also hit 90 in the city (Old record: 87 set on back-to-back days of June 25-26 in 1953)
* Seward hit 88 degrees, breaking the old record of 87 set on July 4, 1999.

Remember air conditioning is in extreme short supply there, if not non-existent.

Some other notes:

* Talkeetna broke their all-time record high on back-to-back days -- 96 Monday and 91 on Sunday. It was still 93 degrees at 9 p.m. on Monday -- just 1 degree cooler than Las Vegas was at 9 p.m. their time. Amazing.
* Seward was 88 degrees in the middle afternoon but a seabreeze blew in and the temperature dropped from 88 to 73 in an hour.
* It was hot, but not quite all-time-record hot, just to the south where Skagway hit 86 and Juneau hit 82 with a very rare thunderstorm on the heels of an 85 degree day Sunday.
* Normal highs across the region are in the low 60s.

The heat in Seward really got me thinking because that is a popular port on Alaska cruises. So I wondered --- could some people currently on an Alaskan cruise be experiencing hotter weather than those on, say, a Caribbean Cruise?

Turns out, yes indeed!

Highs Monday:

Kingston, Jamaica: 91
Miami, Florida: 90
Seward, Alaska: 88

Phillipsburg, St. Maarten: 88
San Juan, Puerto Rico: 87
Skagway, Alaska: 86
St. Thomas, Virgin Islands: 86
Saint John's, Antigua: 84
Juneau, Alaska: 82
Cozumel, Mexico: 81

Bet those outdoor pools are getting way more of a workout than expected on the Alaska cruise ships!

Northwest a refuge for a sweltering nation this summer?

Northwest a refuge for a sweltering nation this summer?

While it's been fairly pleasant around here this spring, summer-like weather has already been well under way in many other parts of the nation.

Denver hit 100 degrees on June 11 -- the earliest 100 degree on record there... by three days! Atlanta hit their inaugural 90 this week, Minneapolis hit 98 in May, parts of Oklahoma are at 100, Livermore, California has already notched 107, Phoenix has been over 108 for a week, and Death Valley has already been over 120!

Back here, we flirted with the upper 80s on one day and have touched 80 on a handful of others, but otherwise, it's been downright comfortable with most days 65-75.

Could that be the building theme of the upcoming summer? Could the Northwest be the refuge from another searing hot summer across the rest of the United States?

Clouds, rain make colorful easel for Mother Nature again

Clouds, rain make colorful easel for Mother Nature again
Rainbow spotted from the Clinton to Mukilteo ferry crossing during Memorial Day Weekend. (Photo: Toby Smith)

A lot of focus this month across the nation has been on stormy weather, but some calm weather has been dazzling a bit as well...

The photo above was taken by Toby Smith as he crossed on a ferry from Clinton to Mukilteo.

Then, a few days later way over in Ontario, Kathy Veck snapped a few shots of a brilliant fire rainbows in Ottawa.

Storm chaser gets amazing video of rotating supercell thunderstorm

Storm chaser Mike Olbinski proved that you don't have to capture a tornado on camera to have an amazing video.

Olbinski was near Booker, Texas on June 3 when he and his weather-geek friend Andy Hoeland got video of a rotating supercell thunderstorm -- an elusive item on his "to-do" checklist for four years.

The two figured out early in the day that northwestern Oklahoma was the spot to begin.

"We landed in Denver that day around 10:30am, and drove and drove until we got that storm," Olbinski said. "We actually had no idea we had made it to Texas until a bit later."

But at first, they ended up on the wrong (north) side of the storm. "It took us going through hail and torrential rains to burst through on the south side (where wall clouds are more visible)," Olbinski wrote on his blog documenting the event. "And when we did…this monster cloud was hanging over Texas and rotating like something out of Close Encounters."

The video is shot in four parts as the two had to move to better position themselves.

Mother Nature's 'greatest hits': Weather Blog's video highlight reel

I had the honor in early June to make a presentation at the annual Mariners Weather Education Day at Safeco Field before their mammoth 16 inning game against the Chicago White Sox.

This year, as in years past, I compiled some of my favorite photos and videos from this blog over the past year or so. 

From intricate lightning strikes, to a tornado that crashes a Kansas wedding, to what 3 feet of snow looks like boiled down to just a few seconds, to what happens when you suddenly spring a 58 mph wind squall on an unsuspecting grounds crew at a Knoxville minor league game, Mother Nature sure has had her moments this year.

If you want to find out more information or see the full length of the videos featured within, I've provided links below to the original blog entries where they came from. Enjoy!

Watch: Dramatic clouds mimic sea surf over Puget Sound skies

Watch: Dramatic clouds mimic sea surf over Puget Sound skies
Undulatus Aperatus over Bothell, Wash. on June 7, 2013. (Photo: Liem Bahneman)

In many ways, air flows in fluid ways that mimic currents in the sea.

On Friday, there was an incredible cloud display that drove this point home.

Liem Bahneman took this time lapse video of altocumulus "Undulatus Aperatus" clouds over Bothell Friday morning -- actually a display of the newest member of the cloud categorization.

Record El Reno, Okla. tornado declared wider than Downtown Portland

Record El Reno, Okla. tornado declared wider than Downtown Portland

NORMAN, Okla. -- Dear Mother Nature: Oklahoma has suffered enough.

It was enough to bring a devastating EF-5 tornado to Moore in mid May. But to bring a second EF-5 tornado to the same general area 11 days later puts these events into the realm of incredible statistical improbability.

In a record no one wanted to have any part of, the National Weather Service announced Tuesday that the deadly tornado that struck El Reno was not only a top-of-the-rung EF-5 rating, but was also an unbelievable 2.6 miles wide -- making it the widest tornado ever recorded in American history.

To put that into Portland perspective, 2.6 miles is roughly the distance from the Oregon Zoo to the Rose Quarter, so if that tornado were here moving northwest to southeast, it would have engulfed the entire Downtown Portland area.

Northern Lights dazzle Pacific Northwest skies

Northern Lights dazzle Pacific Northwest skies
Northern Lights over Crater Lake, Oregon. (Photo: Brad Goldpaint, GoldPaintPhotography.com

A solar storm brought out a display of the Northern Lights to around the Pacific Northwest Friday night.

Around the Puget Sound area, green-tinged skies were reported across several areas of the North Sound, including Hansville, Arlington, Mount Vernon, Oak Harbor and Mukilteo.

Watch: Tornado strikes Weather Channel storm chase team

Watch: Tornado strikes Weather Channel storm chase team
Still from Weather Channel video showing approaching tornado

It's been quite the week for tornado storm chasers. On Monday, noted storm chaser Sean Casey got his specially-designed tornado chase vehicle into the path of an oncoming EF-4 tornado in Kansas and got video never seen before from inside a twister.

On Friday, a team of storm chasers for the Weather Channel led by Mike Bettes also found themselves in the path of a tornado in Oklahoma -- only this time it wasn't intentional.

Daring video takes you inside a massive tornado

Being in the right place at the right time in the right kind of vehicle has netted a team of storm chasers some incredible video that would have been impossible to get (and survive) not too long ago.

Brandon Ivey and Sean Casey of StormChasingVideo.com went out in a specially-made "TIV" (Tornado Intercept Vehicle) and sat in the path of an approaching EF-3 to EF-4 tornado as it blew through the Kansas countryside on Monday.