Cindy Schultz
A bright red sun shines through the smoky haze at sunset on Sunday, July 7, 2019. The air quality was cited as unhealthy for sensitive groups on weather apps.

Haines residents are combating record heat by scrambling to purchase shorts, ice cream and the town’s supply of fans.

On July 6, thermometers reached 90 degrees for the first time since 1975 – 27 degrees hotter than average for the day – as residents struggled to cope with a heat wave.

“Every day people come in looking for shorts,” La Loft employee Marissa Haddock said this week. “Shorts and tank tops are selling really quick.”

Lutak Lumber, Haines Home Building Supply and Olerud’s all sold out of fans last week – and Miles Furniture would have, if its Washington supplier had them in stock.

“We sold every fan we had right off the pallet as it was being unloaded,” Chip Lende of Lutak Lumber said. The company offloaded between 20 to 30 fans last week, plus three air conditioners, which Lende said is about as many as they’ve sold the past three years combined.

Preschool youth made it through the week with spray bottles of water, and seniors with ice cream, said staff at the Chilkat Valley Preschool and Haines Assisted Living Center.

At the American Bald Eagle Foundation, the birds showed clear signs of distress, such as panting, drinking water and even lying down, said raptor program manager Sidney Campbell.

To keep them cool, staff fed them frozen pieces of their regular food, including rabbit, rat, quail and fish.

Haines Animal Rescue Kennel adapted its schedule for the comfort of its animals.

“I definitely go in extra early so the kittens have time to play outside before it’s too hot,” said shelter manager Tracy Mikowski, who added that, luckily, there were no dogs at the shelter.

The kennel also decided not to sponsor its “Patriotic Pooches” event in the Fourth of July parade out of concern for the heat. “We really didn’t want people to bring their dogs out in that hot sun and walk them on that hot pavement,” Mikowski said.

Mikowski said the shelter, which is planning renovations, changed some of its design plans with an eye on the hot weather, including expanding the ventilation system with extra fans. 

The Haines Borough has also taken steps to combat the heat. The borough’s new budget included $25,000 of Capital Improvement Funding for a new air conditioning unit for the public safety building.

Last year, temperatures reached 100 degrees in the poorly ventilated building, where the borough stores many of its electronics.

“(We) had AP&T come in and say, ‘These computers are gonna melt,'” said Krista Kielsmeier, assistant to the borough manager, who works in the building.

The storage room contains servers containing borough data, backups to the servers, and the E-911 emergency service infrastructure.

“These all put off heat,” said Brad Ryan, the borough’s public facilities director. In very hot weather, these systems can fail, and as more and more borough services and functions are digitized, heatwaves like the one in Haines last week pose an even greater risk.

“The heat certainly exacerbates the problem,” said Ryan.

Alaska has made national headlines this month for record-breaking heat in municipalities across the state, including Anchorage, Kenai, Palmer and Juneau. Globally, June was the hottest month on record with temperatures reaching as high at 115 degrees in France on June 28.

The dry, warm weather sparked forest fires across Alaska and the Yukon that cloaked the Chilkat Valley with smoke and sent some residents into a panic, even triggering evacuation.

“This smoke and heat and drought feels apocalyptical. It is giving me the urge to stock up on .22 ammo. When I saw a vole yesterday, I had an image of making my kids mouse stew and a squirrel-hide jacket,” resident Sylvia Heinz wrote on Facebook July 8.

Last weekend, weather apps in Haines warned residents of “unhealthy air quality for sensitive groups,” such as people with heart or lung issues, seniors and kids.

Jerry Ballanco, 76, evacuated Haines on Tuesday due to a chronic lung disease flare-up from the smoke.

“For the last 10 days, I’ve been confined to the house because of the air quality,” Ballanco said in a phone interview from the Juneau airport on Tuesday. “I couldn’t even walk up the stairs without being out of breath.”

Ballanco and his wife will head to Maine for two weeks to wait out the poor conditions.

Wildfires are exacerbated by high temperatures and sunny weather, said Brian Brettschneider, Anchorage climate scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“The reason we’re having high temperatures in all of Alaska is we’ve had this massive area of high pressure that’s been anchored over the state,” Brettschneider said.

Sinking air doesn’t allow for clouds to form, which in turn makes for sunnier, warmer conditions, he said. High temperatures also lead to low humidity, which equates to the perfect conditions for fires.

Brettschneider also explained dry conditions monopolize all the sun’s energy, making the ground even hotter. “When the soil is very dry, all the sun’s energy can now be used to warm up the ground and not used to evaporate soil moisture,” he said.

Though the smoke triggered poor air quality warnings in Haines, it might have acted as a shield against even warmer temperatures.

“Smoke actually has a net cooling effect because particulates reflect sun back into space,” Brettschneider said. He estimates that, without the smoke, temperatures in Haines might have been one or two degrees higher, at most.

So what does this mean for Alaska’s climate moving forward?

“(The temperature is) a combination of long-term warming and unusual weather conditions that have conspired together to make this a historic event,” Brettschneider said. “I’m not comfortable saying that this is the new normal, but this is more likely in our newly warmed world.”YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN:

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