WASHINGTON — We’re only one month into election year 2026 and it’s already clear that the incumbents in Alaska’s federal races have a lot of money to defend their seats.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan raised nearly $7.5 million last year, according to his latest campaign finance report.

“We’re feeling incredibly strong about where our campaign is,” campaign spokesperson Nate Adams said. “Our fundraising is on track, and our support continues to grow.”

The campaign of Democratic challenger Mary Peltola is also touting its fundraising success. Peltola has only been in the race a few weeks and hasn’t had to disclose her contributions yet. But a Peltola campaign press release says she raked in $1.5 million on the first day after she announced. The campaign declined an interview request.

Campaign strategist Jim Lottsfeldt, who led a 2020 group that tried to unseat Sullivan, said the senator’s $7.5 million actually doesn’t give him much of a head start.

“Mary Peltola is in the middle of a money bomb, and she will raise every bit of that and more, and I think ultimately outspend Dan Sullivan,” Lottsfeldt said.

The U.S. Senate race is, so far anyway, a referendum on how people feel about President Trump, he said, and money doesn’t tell the whole story.

“The problem with money in this race is there’s going to be so much of it that most people will shoot their TVs and their computers,” he said. “And I’m not sure how it’s going to all get spent in a way that actually is effective.”

In the U.S. House race, Congressman Nick Begich’s campaign raised $3.2 million last year. Paul Smith, a consultant to the Begich campaign, said that’s an Alaska record for a U.S. House race in a non-election year.

“We feel really good about it and are proud of the start that he has to this election cycle, on the fundraising side,” Smith said.

Democratic challenger Matt Schultz, an Anchorage pastor, filed to run against Begich in October. He reported contributions of $300,000 by year’s end.

Schultz campaign manager Mai Linh McNicholas, said it’s a good foundation, with contributions from more than 2,000 people. She said Schultz set a fundraising record, too.

“It’s the most that any first-time candidate has raised, in an off-year, for this seat in Alaska,” she said.

An Independent candidate is also running for U.S. House — fisherman and retired educator Bill Hill. He hasn’t had to file a campaign finance report yet but his team says he’s raised, like Schultz, more than $300,000, and he did so in his first week.

The reports show Sullivan and Begich, like most incumbents, get significant money from Political Action Committees affiliated with corporations, trade associations and political groups. About half of their 2025 contribution totals are from individuals. The rest largely came from PACs, or “other authorized committees.”

The Alaska ferry system is at risk of running out of operating funds this summer because of a frozen federal grant program, according to state transportation officials.

Nearly half of the Alaska Marine Highway System operating budget in the current calendar year was intended to be funded with a grant from the Federal Transit Administration, according to a budget approved by lawmakers last year. But the grant, which was expected to be issued last year, has not yet been released.

That has left a nearly $78 million hole in the $170 million budget for the current calendar year. Without a solution, ferry boats that provide transportation to communities in Southeast Alaska, Kodiak and along the Aleutian chain could be left without the funds needed to continue running as soon as July.

Amid a tight revenue outlook, the state has few options for backfilling the $78 million that it was counting on receiving from the federal grant, lawmakers in the House and Senate budget committees said in recent days.

The federal grant, known as the Ferry Service for Rural Communities Program, was created through the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed in 2022.

Alaska’s U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski was instrumental in creating the program and designing it to benefit the ailing ferry system, which has seen decreased service and reliability amid years of declining state investment.

Murkowski’s spokesperson Joe Plesha said Monday that the senator had “received a commitment” that the grant funding window would open “this spring.” However, he said her office didn’t have a specific time for releasing the funds, nor any specifics on the amount of funding that would be available this year, given that funding was not released last year. The state is again banking on a federal grant through the program to fund ferry operations in the 2027 calendar year.

In the first three years of the federal program, the state received $45 million, $38 million and $66 million for ferry operations. Because of the grant timeline, the Alaska Legislature has built the grant into its annual budget each year before the specific funding amount has been announced.

Last year, lawmakers — at the request of Gov. Mike Dunleavy — built a $78 million federal grant for ferry operations into the state budget. But after President Donald Trump took office, the grant application window never opened.

In response to a request for comment, the Federal Transportation Administration said in a December statement that it “anticipates announcing a Notice of Funding Opportunity for its Ferry Programs in 2026.” The FTA press office did not provide an explanation as to why the funding had not been awarded in 2025, or when in 2026 the funding opportunity would open.

The office did not immediately respond to additional questions sent Monday.

Murkowski personally reached out to U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy “to ensure that steps are taken so that this funding can get out the door as soon as possible,” her spokesperson said in December.

In previous years of the program, the application window has opened between April and July. Specific funding amounts were announced between five and six months after the window opened. That means that even if Trump administration opens an application window in the coming days or weeks, the funding amount awarded to Alaska likely won’t be known until after the legislative session ends.

State transportation officials, including Transportation Commissioner Ryan Anderson, told the Alaska Senate Finance Committee on Monday that they will be traveling to Washington, D.C., later this month to advocate for the funding to be released.

But they provided few details on how they would proceed if the funding is not awarded in time to keep ferries running through the summer months, which are the system’s most busy and most profitable.

Department officials are proposing to move the ferry system from a calendar year budget cycle to a two-year cycle, which would give them more flexibility in balancing state and federal funding streams.

One idea that Anderson raised was to shore up the system’s available funding by selling the Matanuska, a mainline vessel built in 1963. That ferry has not been in regular operation since 2020 due to structural problems that have been deemed too costly and complicated to fix. Instead, the vessel has been used to house ferry workers in Ketchikan amid a housing crunch that has made it difficult to attract new workers and fill vacancies. But Anderson said other operational ferries, the Kennicott and the Columbia, could be used intermittently as so-called “hotel ferries,” instead of the Matanuska.

It is unclear how much the state would save by selling the Matanuska. In 2022, the state sold the Malaspina — another mainline ferry built in 1963 — to Alaska businessmen John Binkley and David Spokey for $128,250.

Most of December and the first two weeks of January were very cold in most of Alaska and northwest Canada. I posted about the cold in the first half of December here, the cold snap through Christmas here, December overall for Alaska here and Arctic context for the cold snap in the December climate review here.

This post serves as an event recap, though because of the breath and duration of event this review is necessarily selective. Also I have only limited tools to assess the historical context of this event in northwest Canada, so I’ve surely missed some important highlights. Because this event was international scope, I provide temperature information in both degrees F and degrees C. This makes the post longer, but I hope it’s relevant whatever your preferred temperature scale.

The 2025-26 cold snap was distinguished primarily by the long duration of the very cold weather rather than daily extremes. Based on ERA5 Land reanalysis, for Alaska overall, every day but two between December 4 and January 15 was colder than the 1991-2020 baseline average (Fig. 1 top), making this the most significant prolonged cold snap since 2012 (which was colder). For the Yukon Territory, every day between December 5 and January 9 was colder than average (Fig. 1 bottom).

The coldest period for northwest North America overall was December 5 to January 15 (Fig. 2). The departures are quite markable given this is a seven week period.

For the Yukon Territory overall the coldest day was December 22, with temperatures south of 65°N widely 20°C or more below normal (Fig. 3). The very low temperatures extended into the eastern Interior, but Alaska west of about 160°W was notably warmer than normal.

The coldest day from the central Yukon Territory westward into eastern and central Interior Alaska was January 4th (Fig. 4). Temperatures in southern YT were not quite as low as around winter solstice. With above normal temperatures across the Alaska Peninsula this wasn’t quite coldest day for Alaska overall.

The coldest day for Alaska overall was January 8, anchored by the deep cold over southwest mainland but temperatures widely 15°F (9°C) or more below normal over mainland Alaska (Fig. 5). At this point temperatures had moderated considerably in the Yukon Territory and Southeast Alaska.

The lowest temperatures recorded during December and January (Fig. 6) were notable, though not to record levels across Interior Alaska and the Yukon Territory. Both Tok and Chicken, Alaska, with lows of -63F (-52.8C), recorded the lowest temperatures at their respective locations since January 2009. Fairbanks’ and Tanana’s lowest temperature was the same as the low in 2024, and Bettles had a lower temperature last winter. Carmacks, YT reported the lowest temperature since 1996 but Whitehorse, Dawson, Beaver Creek and Pelly Crossing all had the lowest temperature only since 2022.

Beyond the Yukon and Interior Alaska there were a few daily records and other short term extremes during this cold snap.

Juneau airport low temperature of -10F (-23.3C) on December 22 and 23 were daily record lows and also the lowest temperature there since 1995.

In Southcentral Alaska there were a scattering of daily record lows the first and second weeks of January. Talkeetna set a daily record of -38F (-38.9C) on January 8. This is the first daily record low to be set in January since 1975. Also notable was the exceptionally cold January 3rd at Portage Glacier Visitor Center southeast of Girdwood. Calm winds and clear skies allowed the temperature to stay low all day, with a high temperature of -22F (-30.0C) and a low of -30F (-34.9C) the coldest day at this location since the observation site was established in 1998, though January 1989 probably had at least one day as cold or colder. Kenai’s low temperature of -36F (-37.8C) on January 8 wasn’t a daily record but it was the lowest temperature there since 1999.

In Southwest Alaska, King Salmon set daily record lows on two days and Bethel on one day.

The duration of cold snap is illustrated in these site-specific highlights:

• Fairbanks Airport:

  • 21 days with lows of -40F/C or lower, all between December 14 and January 13, the most since the winter of 1970-71

  • 57 hours with dense ice fog (visibility one-quarter mile or lower), the most since the winter of 2008-09

  • 30-day average temperature -31.0F (-35.0C) December 15 to January 13, the lowest since 1970-71

• Tok: 22 days with lows of -50F (-45.6C) or lower, all between December 8 and January 6

• Chicken: 29 days with lows of -40F/C or lower, all between December 6 and January 10

Notable “consecutive days” streaks include:

• Fairbanks Airport:

  • 32 straight days high temperature 0F (-17.8C) or lower (December 14 to January 14), second longest on record

  • 43 straight days with daily low temperature -10F (-23.3C) or lower (December 4 to January 15), second longest on record

• Tanana:

• Eagle (cooperative station):

  • 42 straight days with daily high temperature 0F (-17.8C) or lower, (December 5 to January 15), longest on record

• Northway:

• Anchorage:

• Dawson, YT: 19 straight days with lows -40F/C or lower, longest since 1996

The daily temperature ranges are shown at Fairbanks and Tok (Fig. 7). Fairbanks, the westernmost location shown, had two notable moderating events in December, both associated with pulses of warmer air aloft moving from the Bering Sea into the central Interior and both produced significant snowfall. The first of these made as far east as Tok. Also notable at all these valley locations are a number of very cold days with only a few degrees spread between the high and low temperature. These days were clear (excepting local ice fog) and calm and vividly illustrates that although the sun scraps above the horizon for a few hours, in December and early January this provides no significant solar heating poleward of 60°N.

The cold was particularly unrelenting at Dawson, YT in December (Fig. 8, top), although the coldest day occurred on January 4. At Whitehorse (Fig. 8, bottom), there we two distinct episodes of deep cold, one in early December and another around winter solstice.

An historical perspective on this cold snap at Fairbanks is shown in the times series plotting the coldest 10-day periods each winter since the early 1900s (Fig. 9). By this measure, this cold snap was slightly colder than 2011-12 and not quite as cold as 1988-89. However, about a dozen winters prior to 1980 had a 10-day period colder than this event.

The mid-atmospheric flow pattern and its slow evolution in December and January explains a lot of what happened on the ground. During the second half of December (Fig. 10, left) extremely strong high pressure aloft over the Bering Sea supported high pressure at the surface over eastern Interior Alaska and the Yukon. Because of the lack of solar heating, clear skies allowed continuous escape of heat from the top of the snowpack to outer space, with the cold air pooling in valleys. In early January (Fig 10, right) the pattern changed, with a general westward shift of the high and low pressure centers aloft compared to December. For example, the the Being high pressure shifted northwest to be near the Sea Of Okhotsk, while the low pressure over central Arctic Canada in December shifted west to be over the Beaufort Sea in early January. This westward “retrogression”, so-called because it’s in contrast to the more usual west-to-east progression of mid-latitude weather features near ground, is a common feature of the mid-atmosphere flow pattern during the cold season.