If someone asked you, “Where can I go in the United States to escape the frigid air this January?” what would you say?
Surely Florida would be high on the list. Hawaii would make the cut. The Carolinas, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and California might make the list, too.
Ranked dead last, or perhaps not mentioned at all, would probably be the only state that sits partly within the Arctic Circle: Alaska.
But 2025 is off to an interesting start as far as the weather is concerned.
And believe it or not, the average monthly temperature in Anchorage has been higher during January than in parts of three dozen states because of a record-breaking snowstorm and a wild weather pattern.
But that doesn’t mean you should skip the South and head to Alaska for mild weather next winter.
Warmer in Alaska than …
The average temperature in Anchorage this month has been 29.3 degrees, which is about 13 degrees above average.
That’s warmer than Indianapolis (22.0 degrees); Pittsburgh (22.4 degrees); Cincinnati (24.1 degrees); Charleston, West Virginia (25.7 degrees); Blacksburg, Virginia (25.7 degrees); Winchester, Virginia (26.6 degrees); Lexington, Kentucky (26.8 degrees); St. Louis (27.3 degrees); and Louisville (28.8 degrees).
During January, Anchorage has had less snow than New Orleans and Pensacola, Florida, and the temperature was above freezing for 119 consecutive hours, breaking a record.
The map below shows all of the places that Anchorage has quite remarkably been warmer than through the month. There are too many states to list - about three dozen, stretching as far south as Helene-affected areas of western North Carolina.
It has also been warmer in Alaska than Louisiana.
On the morning of Jan. 22, New Iberia, Louisiana, with a fresh snow pack of about 8 inches, awakened to its lowest temperature in 132 years of recordkeeping: 2 degrees. New Iberia is just 30 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico.
The temperature of 2 degrees in coastal Louisiana was lower than any temperature that Juneau, Alaska, over 2,500 miles to the northwest, had experienced all month.
On the same day, the low temperature in Anchorage, over 3,300 miles to the northwest, was 30 degrees.
Before this month’s cold, the last time New Iberia experienced lower temperatures than Anchorage was in 2006.
The 28-degree low-temperature difference between the two locations on the morning of Jan. 22 was the widest on record, by a large margin, since the overlap in records between the locations started in 1952.
The most unusually warm state
Alaska has been the most unusually warm state during January. The entire state has been more than 5 degrees above average.
The most unusually warm spot in the entire country has been a small settlement named Huslia, Alaska, also known as Ts’aateyhdenaadekk’onh Denh, about 250 miles northwest of Fairbanks. It’s near the edge of the Arctic Circle and has been about 20 degrees warmer than average this month.
Fairbanks experienced only its second above-freezing low temperature during the month of January on record.
Among other states, only very small parts of California and Nevada had monthly temperatures well above their average in January.
Elsewhere, a displaced lobe of the polar vortex has brought an unrelenting chill to large parts of the contiguous United States. About 30 states have experienced temperatures well below average, making this month the coldest in years.
About 104 million people experienced subzero temperatures this month - 40 million or so fewer than the polar vortex episode of January 2014.
The most unusually cold place, being around 11 degrees below average, has been Shock, West Virginia.
Huslia and Shock are separated by about 3,400 miles.
What’s behind the warmth
Alaska is on the front lines of climate change. Warming temperatures, often at a rate faster than many other parts of the planet, are causing glaciers to melt, seas to heat up and patterns of rain and snow to change.
So is the January pattern part of the wider trend, or is an abnormal weather pattern to blame?
The answer is complex - and both can be true.
In terms of longer-term patterns, a marine heat wave in the North Pacific Ocean probably contributed to a stronger jet stream pattern that fueled unseasonable warmth in November across North America. Some of the recent warming may also be linked to a decrease in air pollution, with fewer clouds to reflect sunlight.
The marine heat wave is ongoing. Seas from China to Japan and eastward into the Gulf of Alaska remain warmer than average.
As air masses cross these waters, they are modified and made warmer by the time they reach Alaska.
But there’s also a shorter-term weather component.
A sprawling ridge of high pressure was anchored over Alaska and much of the Arctic during January.
The same jet stream winds that were once unusually fast during fall are now unusually slow and loopy.
This caused the warm ridge of high pressure to stagnate near Alaska.
It also helped to displace frigid air that typically sits in the Arctic near Alaska much farther south across the United States, with the rest of North America feeling the effects of its unusual weather pattern.
When asked whether heating costs in Anchorage would be lower, Alaska-based climate scientist Brian Brettschneider said, “That is the one silver lining of an otherwise very dark cloud.”