Alaska faces 'Icemageddon' as temperatures swing wildly

Very true, Reckless.

No matter where you move mother nature will welcome you!!!

Quite unusually there was a big high pressure system sitting south of Alaska spinning clockwise, pulling warm wet vair up from Hawaii and spinning it up and over Alaska. That same high was spinning freezing cold air from the jet stream east and south into the Pacific Northwest and California leading to exceedingly cold temperatures and snow there. Most often during a La Nina that high would be further south and act to block the flow of storms to the southwest, but as the Arctic warms the highs are able to sit further north than in the past.