Record Cold Chills Alaska

alaska-storm-111109-02 — The massive storm bearing down on Alaska was caught by infrared instruments on a NOAA satellite at 9 a.m. ET on Nov. 8.

(Image credit: NOAA)

Continuing what has been a rough weather year for Alaska, the city of Fairbanks has had record low temperatures for three of the past four days.

On Thursday (Nov. 16), the temperature in Fairbanks sank to minus 41 Fahrenheit (minus 40.5 Celsius), the city's first minus 40 F day of the year. It was also the first day of 40-below temperatures for the month of November since 1994.

Today, the chill continued when the temperature hit minus 34 F (minus 37 C), one degree colder than the day's previous record low. The temperature on Tuesday was minus 35 F (minus 37 C), also a record for that day.

The earliest it’s ever hit 40 below in Fairbanks was Nov. 5, 1907, when it hit 41 below, reported the Fairbanks Daily Miner.

"This sort of thing is certainly more common in December and January than November," meteorologist Dan Hancock at the National Weather Service in Fairbanks told the Daily Miner. "We can go through an entire winter and not get this cold."

The average temperature in Fairbanks for this week is around 9 F (minus 12 C), with an average low of minus 7 F (minus 21 C). The cold weather will linger though the weekend, according to the forecast from the NWS Fairbanks office.

Alaska has been hit by wild weather earlier this year, when a ferocious winter storm hit their coast. The storm, a cross between a hurricane and a blizzard, created huge waves on the Bering Sea that came crashing to the shore.

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