Utqiaġvik records second-coldest May high in 105 years

While the rest of the Arctic was running warm — record spring heat in Svalbard and the Nordics, 92°F in Lodeynoye Pole, Russia, 86°F in Canada's Northwest Territories — Alaska spent May locked in a freezer.

Utqiaġvik's monthly high of 29°F was the second-lowest May maximum in 105 years of records and the coldest since 1952. Anchorage topped out at 60°F, its lowest May high since 1980. Cordova's 58°F was the lowest since 1965, Kodiak's 54°F the lowest since 1966.

The statewide extremes ran from 74°F at Hydaburg to -1°F at the Barrow observatory. Alaska and Nunavut together logged their second-coldest spring in 40 years.

The cold carried consequences. River breakup barely started on the North Slope by month's end, and ice jams on the Yukon flooded Holy Cross — homes and the entire airstrip underwater for days behind a downriver jam — prompting the state to expand its disaster declaration May 21 to cover the river from Grayling to Russian Mission. One upside: May wildfire activity totaled about 900 acres, just 15 percent of the long-term median.

The strange part is what Alaska's cold spring did to the Arctic ledger.

Sixty percent of the Arctic ran warmer than the 1991–2020 baseline, but only 48 percent of Arctic land did — the first spring below half since 2013, with Alaska supplying much of the cold side. Zoom out and the warming signal holds: spring 2026 still ranked 13th warmest Arctic-wide since 1950, and sea ice extent has hugged record lows since November, with the October-through-May average the lowest in the 48-year satellite record.

Alaska's May, in other words, was weather. The ice numbers are climate.