Fall is my favorite season, and one of the signs of the season’s approach is the first winter storm warning of the year in the country. Not shockingly, this almost always occurs in Alaska and 2022 is no different. An upper level low pressure system is moving from the Russian Far East into Alaska, bringing cooler temperatures. Most folks living in Alaska are seeing rain, but this is perhaps the first good snow storm of the year for the middle elevations of Alaska’s mountains.
The winter storm warning, which expired early Sunday, was for the eastern Brooks Range in the northeastern part of the state. Areas above 3,000 feet were forecast to receive up to eight inches of snow, with lesser values between 2,000 and 3,000 feet.
Higher snowfall values are actually expected in the mountains of South Central Alaska (to the north of Anchorage), but did not earn a winter storm warning. The main difference between the two regions is human use. In the Brooks Range, there are villages being impacted by snow as well as major travel corridors to the oil extraction regions on the North Slope whereas most people and highways further south are lower down.
This difference likely contributes to these areas having different thresholds for when a warning gets issued. We have this in the Pacific Northwest as well. In Portland’s county warning area, for example, a winter storm warning is issued for the Portland metro area when either four inches of snow in 12 hours or six in 24 hours is expected. Up at Mount Hood, where the infrastructure is built to handle more snow, a warning isn’t issued until a foot is expected in 12 hours or a foot and a half in 24 hours.
Despite it being Alaska, this is actually fairly early in the season for them to be getting enough snow to warrant issuance of a warning. Taking the state as a whole, in most years the first winter storm warning isn’t issued until sometime between the middle of September and the middle of October. I do not know enough about Alaskan meteorology to say what this early-season event might mean for this winter as a whole up there or in Washington and Oregon.
The main population centers in Alaska still have a ways to go before their first snowfall. Here are the average first dates for select cities:
| City | Avg First Snow |
| Anchorage | October 17 |
| Fairbanks | October 1 |
| Juneau | November 4 |
| Utqiagvik (Pt. Barrow) | August 25 |
We also have a long way to go before we start seeing snow in the Pacific Northwest. Since 2008, the earliest winter storm warning issued for any part of Washington came for the mountains in late September. Oregon’s earliest was early October. It is far too early to talk about any snow in lowland areas of the Pacific Northwest, but climatologically we are now past the warmest part of the year and are sliding into my favorite season.
