It’s Been Warmer in The Arctic Circle Than Wyoming This Week

Verkhoyansk is a town in Siberian that is located in the Arctic Circle. In the winter it can drop to 40 degrees below zero. In the summer the town of about 1300 people usually heats up to highs in the 60-degree range. But, this week this Arctic village has seen triple digits temperatures.

Way down south, here in Wyoming, it's been a warm week. Cheyenne has been baking (relatively speaking) under daytime highs near 90 degrees. On average, Cheyenne enjoys June highs in the upper 70s, with Laramie, WY averaging just a bit cooler and Casper, WY just a bit warmer.

This past Saturday (June 20) Verkhoyansk had a high temperature of 100 degrees. It hasn't hit 100 in Cheyenne since 1954. On Saturday in Cheyenne, the National Weather Service recorded a high temperature of 79 degrees.

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“It has been an unusually hot spring in Siberia, and the coinciding lack of underlying snow in the region combined with overall global temperature increases, undoubtedly helped play a critical role in causing this extreme temperature observation,” Prof Cerveny, President’s Professor of Geographical Sciences, Arizona State University said in a statement from the World Meteorological Organization.

Verkhoyansk sits at 67.5 degrees north latitude with the Arctic Circle beginning at 66.5 degrees.

The BBC reports that a heatwave has been cooking the Arctic Circle this spring and summer with temperatures about 10 degrees Celsius above average.

"[T]he Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth," Dr Dann Mitchell, associate professor in atmospheric science at the University of Bristol told the BBC. "So it is unsurprising to see records being broken in this region."