Southcentral Alaska is in a drought due to the lack of rain, which has caused the widespread wildland fires that are blazing across the state of Alaska. Hot and dry conditions have been seen as the normal weather pattern for nearly every day since May. For the month of June, the state of Alaska has been the driest the weather’s been on record. Additionally, the state has already burned over 2 million acres, considered the 8th largest fire season since 1950 in terms of area burned, according to the NWS Anchorage.
Pam Szatanek, Meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Anchorage tells KSRM:
“There has been a little bit of rain here and there in different places, but what happened was we had a big dome of high pressure and that was keeping most of the rain out of the area and we ended up going into moderate drought a couple of weeks ago and it’s definitely been pretty intense, especially for southwest Alaska. As far as the records go back, it’s actually the driest May and June since we have records.”
Szatanek talks on if there’s going to be relief in sight for the weather:
“As far as what the models are showing, we’re actually going to start trending wetter. We’re expecting temperatures to cool down within the next week and we’re expecting more storms to come in off of the Pacific and then also down from the Arctic. We do see some relief in sight, but as of today, we’re still in Planning Level 5 (for wildland fires in Alaska).
Szatanek said that the 2022 wildfire season was especially unique in that it began with the manifest of drought-like conditions in Southwest Alaska. Normally, they begin in Interior Alaska.