A panorama is seen in September 2019, close to Denali, Alaska.
Extreme climate in Alaska that has introduced document excessive temperatures and torrential downpours has left authorities within the far northern US state warning of “Icemageddon”.
Huge sheets of ice are blocking roads and choking site visitors in Fairbanks, Alaska’s second largest metropolis, reported the state’s transportation division, which has coined the neologism—a play on “Armageddon”—to explain the chilly deadlock.
“We’re experiencing an unprecedented collection of winter storms,” the division tweeted.
Scientists say the unchecked burning of fossil fuels and different human exercise is altering the local weather, making it extra unpredictable and liable to wild swings.
Rick Thoman, a climate specialist on the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, referred to as the situations of the previous few days “very uncommon”.
Hours after thermometers on Kodiak Island within the south reached 19.4 levels Celsius (67 Fahrenheit)—the warmest December temperature ever recorded in Alaska—the inside of the state noticed 25 millimeters (an inch) of rain fall in just some hours, a downpour unseen in many years.
Then when temperatures plummeted once more, all of it froze.
The rainstorm was brought on by the identical climate system that introduced the hovering temperatures, transporting heat, moist air from Hawaii to the frigid far north.
“This type of factor—document excessive moisture content material, document heat air—is precisely what we anticipate, after all, in our warming local weather.
Unsettled climate was persevering with to play havoc with flights in an out of Sea-Tac International Airport in Seattle, with a whole bunch of flights canceled or delayed this week.
In California, snow and protracted rain additionally proceed to trigger issues, with localized flooding forcing evacuations in areas round Los Angeles.
In the north of the state, the vacationer magnet of Lake Tahoe—the place forest fires a number of months in the past brought about residents to flee—has been buried in heavy snow, leaving some individuals lower off.
More than 5 meters of snow have now fallen on components of the Sierra Nevada mountain vary this month, an all-time document, in line with the Central Sierra Nevada Snow Laboratory at University of California at Berkeley.
Drought-hit western US walloped by highly effective winter storm
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Alaska faces ‘Icemageddon’ as temperatures swing wildly (2021, December 31)
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