The past year came in like a lamb, and mostly stayed that way.
The average temperature in Haines in 2016 was 44.2 degrees F., making it apparently the warmest year in National Weather Service records for the town, said David Levin, a forecaster for the agency in Juneau.
The previous warmest year on record was 1981, with an average temperature of 43.6.
As for precipitation, 2016 was the 20th driest year on record with 46.34 inches. “It was on the dry side,” Levin said.
Official temperature and precipitation readings are taken at the Haines Airport and there were two weeks last year that the sensors were not working, Levin noted.
Other cities in Southeast also experienced hottest years ever, including all of Southeast, and much of the Interior with hottest, second hottest and third hottest years being recorded.
Temperatures in Haines started out mild – borough crews were mowing a lawn at the corner of Main Street and Third Avenue in mid-April – and then warmed up. But the year ended with a bite as average temperatures from October and December were cooler than normal, Levin said.
According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, 2016 was by far the warmest year on record in Alaska. For Alaska as a whole, 2016 exceeded the previous warmest year, 2014, by about 1.6 degrees F, and was 5.9 degrees warmer than the average year from 1925 to 2000.
Warmer weather makes warmer water, which can be good and bad for commercial and recreational fishermen.
Run-off that flows into the rivers and lakes stimulates growth in juvenile sockeye salmon, said Mark Sogge, area management biologist for Fish and Game in Haines.
“We have had sustained run-off and the fish tend to spread out when the river is high,” Sogge said, making fish more difficult to catch by anglers.
It’s too early to tell how warm temperatures last year will affect the young sockeye in the years to come. “We have a hard time teasing out one year; we are dealing on fish cycles and won’t know the impact until later,” Sogge said.
According to Sogge, the temperature in the Chilkat Lake slough got to be 20 Celsius. “Adult sockeye don’t like to move in temperatures that high. That is something we will have to watch out for,” he said.
Escapements for local sockeye runs were met, but Sogge said warm water creates more algae, which sticks to gillnets, making them visible to fish, that respond by swimming around them.
Warmer-than-normal water also causes fish to swim deep, eluding fathoms of nets that would otherwise trap their gills.