A Year of Weather at Gates of the Arctic: Bettles’ Wettest December and a Warm March

In December 2021, Bettles, Alaska, received 3.61 inches of precipitation, 345% of normal and the wettest December on record. The National Park Service's Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve tells the season-by-season story of a year of weather, from fall 2021 through August 11, 2022, using the Bettles station and the park's own climate stations. The Bettles station has recorded temperature and precipitation for over seventy years, which gives today's changes their context.

The park monitors weather to understand daily, monthly and seasonal patterns and shifting averages that affect the plants, animals and water systems of the park, and tracks extremes such as drought, floods, heat waves, cold snaps and high winds, alongside other "vital signs" of how these high-latitude lands are changing.

Climate stations in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve (NPS).

Fall 2021: cooler, a little dry

November 2021 was the coldest November to date at the Pamichtuk station, 30 miles southwest of Anaktuvuk Pass, where records began in 2013: -19 °F against an average of -13 °F. Ram Creek and Killik Pass in the west also had their coldest Novembers, -18 and -22 °F, but their records go back only about a decade, a period when Alaska had some of its warmest temperatures on record.

Winter 2021-22: cool and wet

December brought extreme precipitation and rain-on-snow to Alaska's west coast and Interior. In Bettles three storms came: December 5 to 7 (17 inches of snow), December 18 to 20 (9 inches) and December 25 to 29 (16 inches). The wettest day, December 6, had 9.1 inches of snow holding 1.07 inches of water. In the park's northern mountains the temperature reached only about 22 °F in the warm spells, so the precipitation likely fell as snow. January precipitation was near normal and February's less than 50% of normal. The winter total of 4.97 inches was 2 inches above normal, the 5th wettest winter on record.

Temperatures stayed cooler than normal as La Niña persisted into a second winter, as it generally means cooler weather for Alaska. December was just below normal, January 1.2 °F cooler and February more than 6 °F cooler, though a new record high of 34 °F came on December 20.

During a La Niña the winter is often cooler than normal in Alaska because of the positions of the Pacific and polar jet streams (NWS/NCEP Climate Prediction Center).

Spring 2022: warm and dry

The season ran 1.8 °F above normal, mostly because March was 5.8 °F warmer; April was just below normal and May just above. At an average of 26.3 °F, the spring was more than 5 °F warmer than 2021's. Chimney Lake, with 10 years of record, had its 4th warmest spring (the coolest was 2013 at 13.1 °F, the warmest 2019 at 25.1 °F). Spring is the driest season, and this one gave only 0.84 inches, against a normal 2.10, mostly rain in early May.

Snow and summer

Bettles is one of the few long-term stations still measuring daily snowfall. The 2021-22 season brought 106.6 inches, above normal and the 14th snowiest on record, though the winters of 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 had more. Snow was last persistent at Bettles on May 14; a camera at the Pamichtuk station showed the mountain site melted out around April 30.

Pamichtuk station camera, used to follow snow accumulation, melt-out, green-up and vegetation changes (NPS).

Summer, through August 11: June was near normal in temperature but dry, with 0.96 inches of rain against 1.46 normal, and with little rain after mid-month the region was primed for lightning fires, most of them south of the park though several burned inside it. July averaged 58.9 °F, almost a degree cooler than normal, with rainfall 90% of normal, mostly late in the month. August opened warm, a cold front brought below-normal temperatures, and by August 11 its rainfall was right at normal. The park planned to update full summer statistics in the fall.

Sources

• National Park Service, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve/Bettles Weather Summary Fall 2021, Winter 2021-2022, and Spring 2022; written as of August 11, 2022; rewritten in hubnx's own words.