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Do you think that Alaska is cold during winter? Of course it is! However, the type of cold the state is experiencing right now if unprecedented. How about having consecutive days of temperatures colder than 40 degrees below zero!
This is true for much of the Alaskan interior, particularly near Fairbanks and in between the Alaska and Brooks mountain ranges.
Over the last four days in Fairbanks, temperatures have struggled to reach 40 degrees below zero, with organizers in Fairbanks even postponing their annual New Year’s Eve fireworks show due to the extreme cold.
The temperature in the final few minutes of 2025 in Fairbanks was 43 degrees below zero.
In other words, conditions are unbearably and dangerously cold, even by local standards in Central Alaska.
In Chicken, Alaska, located near the Canadian Border, temperatures dropped as low as 62 degrees below zero! Numerous other locations in the eastern Alaskan Interior have seen temperatures between 50 and 60 degrees below zero.
On top of bringing dangerously cold minimum temperatures, this most recent cold snap has also been more prolonged than usual.
Temperatures in much of Alaska have been largely colder than usual since roughly December 5th, 2025
Some regions in eastern Alaska and the neighboring Yukon Territory in Canada have seen combined December temperatures up to 30 degrees below the climatological average.
For reference, the average December temperature in Fairbanks from 1904 to 2025 is 22 degrees below zero with much of central Alaska having similarly cold December temperatures on average. The city has seen a temperature departure of 18.5 degrees below average for December 2025, ranking as the 8th coldest December on record.
This means that much of east-central Alaska has been stuck between 40 and 50 degrees below for nearly an entire month!
While many factors affect the severity of winters in Alaska, one notable statistic is the unusually high snowfall in portions of Alaska this past December. Fairbanks saw more than double its usual snowfall for the month of December.
Juneau, Alaska’s capital, located in far-southeast Alaska, has seen nearly its entire annual snowfall in December alone, at over 80 inches.
Snowfall promotes cold temperatures by reflecting light from the sun back to space. In Alaska, there is already very little sunlight during the winter due to its positioning on and near the Arctic Circle.
What little sunlight snow-covered portions of Alaska have seen has been quickly reflected back to space by the unusually heavy snowpack.
In Central Alaska, located between the Alaska and Brooks ranges, the heavy snowpack, lack of sunlight, and lack of transport of air from warmer locations have led to the development of an arctic high pressure system, leading to stable conditions and light winds. These conditions cause the land to rapidly lose heat, becoming even colder. With this arctic high pressure is in place, central Alaska has remained cold. However, a slight breakdown in the strength of the high will allow temperatures to warm somewhat (see forecast for next 3 days below).
Fortunately, this pattern will break down as we approach mid-January. A more active storm track from the Pacific is poised to bring wetter and warmer conditions to portions of Alaska, especially towards the middle to second half of the month. While this wetter pattern means snow for most, temperatures will improve, being far more bearable than the current temperatures in the 40 to 50 degree below zero range.
Hayden Marshall is a meteorologist intern and First-Year-Master’s Student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been following weather content over the past three years as a Storm Spotter and weather enthusiast. He can be found on Instagram and Linkedin.
