By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
As a bubble of hot air settled over Alaska, a new high temperature record for June 26 was set on Sunday, though overall temperatures have remained well below all-time highs, the National Weather Service said today.
The 68 degrees recorded at the Sitka airport Sunday was 1 degree higher than Sitka’s previous record for the date, 67 degrees on June 26, 1990, NWS data shows.
With temperatures across Southeast expected to peak in the coming days, no locations have exceeded 90 degrees.
“The peak of the heat is supposed to be today and tomorrow. So we really haven’t hit our maximums yet and no place has hit 90 over Southeast for this particular event,” Juneau-based NWS meteorologist Ben Linstid told the Sentinel this morning.
Thorne Bay came closest, with a reading of 82 degrees – the hottest June 26 on record for the Prince of Wales Island community.
The forecast in Sitka for today was for a high in the upper 60s.
The hottest day ever recorded in Sitka was only two years ago, a July day in 2020 when the thermometer hit 88 degrees. In 1913 Ketchikan had a 96 degree day, Linstid said.
The current hot, dry conditions are caused by a large bubble of air covering the region, he said.
“Strong high pressure over the Gulf of Alaska, and we’ve got really, really warm temperatures aloft… (at) about 5,000 feet or so up in elevation,” he said. “We’ve got really warm temperatures up there and we’ve got a large bubble. There are warm temperatures all over the state of Alaska. So one, that makes things really, really stable. And then it just warms up the atmosphere.”
Although there’s no rain in Sitka’s forecast, Linstid said the fire risk seems low as winds are light and humidity remains high. Earlier this month, the NWS issued fire warnings for parts of northern Southeast.
“We need certain criteria to be met in order to actually issue those warnings,” Linstid explained. “We need low relative humidity, 15 miles an hour wind speed or higher and temperature of 75 degrees or hotter.”
The NWS posts fire weather updates to their website https://www.weather.gov/arh/fire. While a number of fires are active in Alaska now, as seen on smoke.alaska.edu, there are no current red flag warnings in the state.
Linstid emphasized the difficulty of making an accurate forecast in conditions like today, when a low marine layer is present.
“It makes the forecast extremely challenging,” he said. “You know, whether those clouds stay in Sitka Sound, and you guys end up with a lower temperature, misty, kind of cloudy overcast day, or they back out and you get a hot day. ... So just pay attention to the forecast, because we update it frequently when we’re watching these marine layer clouds.”
The forecast is posted to forecast.weather.gov, though the Weather Service station in Juneau also posts updates on its Twitter and Facebook pages.
