Interior Alaska gets dose of cold

From:
http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~26794~1806768,00.html

Article Published: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 - 10:30:35 AM AKST

Interior Alaska gets dose of cold
By Associated Press


FAIRBANKS

Mark Ross looked at the temperature reading at Creamer's Field Farmhouse
Visitor Center and thought perhaps he needed a new thermometer.

"It was 48 below at 8 o'clock," Ross said.

It's been a few years since anyone has seen it that cold in Fairbanks.

Fairbanks shivered through its first 40-below-zero temperatures in almost
two years on Tuesday when the mercury dropped to 42 below at Fairbanks
International Airport, snapping one of the longest stretches between
40-below temperatures on record in the city.

The last time it was 40 below or colder in Fairbanks was Jan. 26, 2002.

"It's been a little while," confirmed meteorologist Rick Thoman at the
National Weather Service in Fairbanks.

Temperatures throughout the central and northeast Interior dipped to their
lowest levels in more than three years Tuesday as a cold air mass covering
much of the Interior intensified when skies cleared.

The coldest temperature came from Chandalar Lake, about 300 miles north of
Fairbanks on the Dalton Highway, where the mercury bottomed out at 56 below.
In Tanana, a low of 49 below was recorded.

Had it not been for the 43-below temperature recorded on Jan. 26, 2002, the
only time it hit 40 below that winter, the streak of consecutive days
without a 40-below temperature in Fairbanks would have been 1,377 days.
That's almost four years.

The coldest temperature recorded last winter was 39 below and the cold
temperature in the winter of 2000-2001 was 36 below. Steve Verbanac, owner
of the Angel Creek Lodge on Chena Hot Springs Road, said he's used to the
cold after years of running a trapline.

"It don't bother me too much, but my wood pile goes down pretty fast when it
gets 40 below," he said.