Weather
The Yukon Quest trail is in the subarctic climate range. In Fairbanks, the average February temperature is −3.8 °F (−20 °C), but −40 °F (−40 °C) is not uncommon, and temperatures have dropped to −58 °F (−50 °C). An average of 7.3 inches (185 mm) of snow falls in February, with average snowpack depth of 22 inches (559 mm).
Outside the sheltered urban areas of Fairbanks, Whitehorse, and Dawson City, temperatures and snowfall are often more extreme. During the 2008 race, competitors started in −40 °F (−40 °C) temperatures in Fairbanks and then faced winds of 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) on the trail, resulting in severe wind chills. At higher elevations, such as the crossings of Rosebud and Eagle summits, whiteout blizzards are common. In the 2006 race, 12 teams were struck by a massive storm that eventually caused the evacuation of seven teams by helicopter. In 2009, mushers endured winds up to 50 miles per hour (80 km/h), blowing snow, and subzero temperatures atop Eagle Summit, where conditions had been even worse in a storm during the 1988 race, when wind chill temperatures dropped below −100 °F (−73 °C).
The extreme temperatures pose a serious health hazard. Frostbite is common, as is hypothermia. In the 1988 Yukon Quest, Jeff King suffered an entirely frozen hand because of nerve damage from an earlier injury which left him unable to feel the cold. King said his hand became "like something from a frozen corpse". In 1989, King and his team drove through a break in the Yukon River in −38 °F (−39 °C) temperatures. Frozen by the extreme cold, King managed to reach a cabin and thaw out. Other racers have suffered permanent damage from the cold: Lance Mackey suffered frostbitten feet during the 2008 Yukon Quest, and Hugh Neff lost the tips of several toes in the 2004 race.
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“Wind, the season-climate mixer,
In my Witches’ Weather Primer
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First you let the summer simmer....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
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—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)