The weather has cooled off a bit in the interior of Alaska:
Friday marked day six of the worst cold snap to hit Fairbanks in several years and there is no relief in sight for residents who live in Alaska’s second-largest city — or the business owners they call to bail them out when their cars, pipes and septic tanks freeze.
The temperature in North Pole dipped to 55 degrees below zero on Wednesday night, the lowest temperature recorded in the greater Fairbanks area during what has been six days of severe cold. It was “only” 46 below at 4 p.m. Friday in North Pole, but the temperature was “dropping by the hour,” meteorologist Austin Cross at the National Weather Service in Fairbanks said.
Friday marked the fifth day in the last six the temperature at Fairbanks International Airport hit 40 below or colder; it was only 38 below at the airport on New Year’s Day.
Forecasters expect temperatures in Fairbanks this weekend will likely touch 50 below and there is no indication the cold wave will dissipate anytime soon.
Since I don't read Alaskan newspapers often, and I'm used to seeing cold Alaskan temperatures on the Weather Now extremes page, I actually first heard this when ten people emailed me to complain about a bug in Weather Now. It turns out, the news story above linked to Weather Now and drove 2,400 unique visitors to the site in six hours.
I should know better. Fortunately my servers easily handle 10,000 page views per hour, but still, seeing a traffic spike like that caught me a little off-guard.