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Alaska Interior

The interior of Alaska makes up most of the state. It is largely wild and undeveloped.

Mountains include Mount McKinley (Denali) in the Alaska Range and the Wrangell Mountains.

The largest city in the interior is Fairbanks, Alaska's second-largest city, in the Tanana Valley. Other towns include North Pole, just south of Fairbanks, Eagle, Talkeetna, Glennallen, Delta Junction, Nenana and Tok.

Climate

Interior Alaska experiences seasonal temperature extremes. Winter temperatures in Fairbanks average -25°C (-12°F) and summer temperatures average +17°C (+61°F). Temperatures there have been recorded as low as -61°C (-78°F) in mid-winter, and as high as +34°C (+93°F) in summer.

The average annual precipitation in Fairbanks is 28.7 cm (11.3 inches). Most of this comes in the form of snow during the winter. Most storms in the interior of Alaska originate in the Gulf of Alaska, south of Alaska.

On clear winter nights, the aurora borealis can often be seen dancing in the sky. Like all subarctic regions, the months from May to July in the summer have no night, only a twilight during the night hours. The months of November - January have little daylight. Fairbanks receives an average 21 hours of daylight between May 10 and August 2 each summer, and an average of less than 4 hours of daylight between November 18 and January 24 each winter.


Regions of Alaska
Alaskan Bush | Interior | North Slope | Panhandle | South Central | Tanana Valley
Largest Cities
Anchorage | Barrow | Bethel | Fairbanks | Homer | Juneau | Kenai | Ketchikan | Kodiak | Kotzebue | Nome | Palmer | Petersburg | Seward | Sitka | Unalaska | Valdez | Wasilla
Boroughs and Census Areas
Aleutians East | Aleutians West | Anchorage | Bethel | Bristol Bay | Denali | Dillingham | Fairbanks North Star | Haines | Juneau | Kenai Peninsula | Ketchikan Gateway | Kodiak Island | Lake and Peninsula | Matanuska-Susitna | Nome | North Slope | Northwest Arctic | Prince of Wales - Outer Ketchikan | Sitka | Skagway-Hoonah-Angoon | Southeast Fairbanks | Valdez-Cordova | Wade Hampton | Wrangell-Petersburg | Yakutat | Yukon-Koyukuk


Last updated: 02-07-2005 15:47:19
Last updated: 05-02-2005 19:58:22