Last Sunday (26), summer in Brazil, the city of São Paulo woke up with thermometers showing an average of 15.2°C, according to data from the city hall. More than 13 thousand kilometers (in a straight line), the small town of Kodiak, in Alaska, on the other side of the continent, registered at the same moment a temperature of 19.4°C — in the middle of winter.
“At the end of December. I didn’t think such a thing would be possible,” wrote Rick Thoman, a climate expert at the Fairbanks University of Alaska’s Arctic International Research Center.
Meanwhile, historic blizzards and severe cold snaps even for winter continue to close roads and cancel thousands of flights in other parts of the United States, a country that has faced extreme weather events with increasing frequency.
The situation in Alaska also draws attention due to the volume of rain that has fallen in the American state, with the right to record storms, in a month known for being dry.
Other regions of the country also registered high temperatures for this time of year, such as New York, which in December reached peaks of more than 20ºC, a difference of more than 15ºC in relation to the historical average.
This scenario contrasts with the extreme cold brought by cold fronts coming from the Arctic that have frozen the west of the country. In Seattle, for example, near the Canadian border, the National Weather Service also recorded last Sunday temperatures of -5.6°C.
The measurement surpasses the record set nearly 100 years ago, in 1924, when meteorologists recorded -4.4°C. In some neighborhoods, residents have reported thermometers close to -10°C.
Seattle recorded even more than 6 inches of snow, which generated unusual scenes, such as a driver being fined by police for driving a car covered by ice. The local government even opened six shelters to receive people during the extreme cold period.
Drop-in centers have also opened in the neighboring state of Oregon, where Portland’s city government has declared an emergency. “This is going to be a very challenging season and we all need to be prepared,” said Multnomah County Chief Deborah Kafoury.
The city has started to encourage the population to check that their neighbors are okay and look for signs of hypothermia, such as confusion, slurred speech and imbalance. “I want to emphasize the importance of not assuming that someone is just drunk and can be left alone,” said the county health secretary.
The cold snap caused record blizzards in California as well. The Sierra Nevada Mountains have accumulated 495 centimeters of snow, breaking the record 455 centimeters that had been recorded in 1970. Roads have also been closed due to snow storms, as has a ski resort.
Even in Alaska, other regions escaped the heat wave and also experienced record cold, such as the city of Ketchikan, 3,300 km from Kodiak — the state is the largest of the American federative units.
The southeast and south regions of the country also set records, but at the other end of the thermometers. The city of Little Rock, Arkansas, recorded 25.5°C at Christmas. The highest mark so far for the date had been 22.8°C, according to the national meteorological service. Dallas, Texas hit 27.2°C on the same day, breaking a more modest record of 26.7°C recorded five years ago.
The government has issued warnings for wildfires in the central and southern parts of the region known as the High Plains, which include parts of Texas and Oklahoma, given “the mix of unusually warm temperatures, low humidity levels and windy conditions.”
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