Alaska Travel Weather

Our 30 plus years of living in Alaska has taught us to tell folks "Please don't try to plan your trip around what you think is going to be the best 2 weeks of weather."

Alaska is a very mountainous state with oceans on 3 sides of it.  The weather in any part of Alaska is as unpredictable as anywhere on Earth.

In our years in Alaska, we have seen beautiful and bad weather in every month.  We learned not to ever plan on it being "nice" or "bad" at a certain time of year.  It's weather.  I don't know how good the forecasters are in your neck of the woods but sometimes in Alaska, they don't exactly nail it.  Their so-called average temperatures are just that - an average. 50 degrees one year on June 1st and 80 degrees the next makes the average for that day 65 degrees.  It's factual but not really helpful!

I love to point out that if you go and look at average summer time temperatures for Anchorage, our home town for over 28 years, they'll lead you to believe that the temps hang out right at about 68 degrees.  Officially, they are correct.  What people don't know is that Anchorage's official temperature is taken at the airport which is on a peninsula that sticks out into Cook Inlet and is always 10 to 15 degrees colder than it is in other parts of town.  Again, it's correct information, just misleading!

All of that being said, it comes back to dressing in layers, layers, layers!  Our motto is "You can always take it off.  If you don't have it with you and you get cold it could ruin your day!"

What surprises most people is that on average, to a certain point, it gets warmer and dryer as you travel North in Alaska in the summer time.

 Southeast Alaska, where most folks who only cruise go, is the coldest and wettest part of the areas of the state people visit in the summer.  It is a northern rain forest, which is why a really good quality raincoat is big on our list of items.  Ketchikan averages something like 215 inches of rain a year!

As you travel north to South-Central Alaska, the climate gets warmer and for the most part drier in summer months.  Again, please don't look at these charts that give you official temperatures.  Summertime temps in this area can be anywhere from low 50's to mid-80's the same day!  Layers, layers, layers!  Detecting a theme here?

As you travel north to Denali, it gets really nice through Wasilla and Talkeetna only to cool down a bit as you enter the area of the park.  They get some really beautiful days there any time between mid May and Labor day, but it is a mountainous area and weather in the mountains is fickle.  Layers, layers…OK you get the point!

Further north, Fairbanks and the Interior is actually classified as an Arctic desert!  Warm and dry is for the most part what their summers are like.  We lived in Fairbanks for our first 8 years in Alaska and nothing beats a summer day in Fairbanks!  Temperatures from 65 to high 80's, sunlight basically 24 hours a day and a loving community that celebrates every moment during this time because December and 40 below is always at the back of your mind!  We always said "let's go!  We can sleep in November!"

Fairbanks is the one place in Alaska where we get kind of lax on the "layers, layers, layers" theme.  While you may want to have a jacket with you for later in the evening, generally if it's nice to start the day it'll be nice to finish it.

As you go north from Fairbanks it will cool considerably once you get into the Brooks Range and from there onto the North Slope.  It is unbelievably beautiful, true wilderness.  Again, if you've packed the items on our list you really should be fine traveling here.

If you're traveling to the Aleutian Islands or western Alaska (Dillingham, Nome, Kotzebue) please look elsewhere for advice as we haven't traveled there enough to give you educated, experiential advice.