![]() Indigenous elders also agree that they’re seeing thunderstorms more often. For example, the number of days with thunderstorms recorded at the Fairbanks Airport show a clear increase. In interior Alaska, we’re getting thunderstorms more frequently. ![]() In a warming world, air can hold more moisture, so you can get intense storms. They’re driven by two factors: the available moisture in the lower atmosphere and the temperature difference between the lower and middle atmospheres. They’re what meteorologists call air mass or pulse thunderstorms. Thunderstorms in Alaska are different from in most of the lower 48 in the sense that they tend to not be associated with weather fronts. Lightning strikes in Alaska July 2-4, 2022. So, the weather factors – the warm spring, low snowpack and unusual thunderstorm activity – combined with multidecade warming that has allowed vegetation to grow in southwest Alaska, together fuel an active fire season. Global warming has also increased the amount of fuels – the plants and trees that are available to burn. An outbreak of thunderstorms there in late May and early June provided the spark. Then we had a warm spring, and southwest Alaska dried out. Why is Alaska seeing so many fires this year?Įarly in the season, southwest Alaska was one of the few areas in the state with below normal snowpack. We asked Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks, why Alaska is seeing so many large, intense fires this year and how the region’s fire season is changing. By early July, that number was well over 2 million acres, more than twice the size of a typical Alaska fire season. ![]() ![]() By mid-June 2022, over 1 million acres had burned. Alaska is on pace for another historic wildfire year, with its fastest start to the fire season on record. ![]()
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