Alaska Interior

The Alaska Interior covers most of that U.S. state's territory. It is largely wilderness. 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, Tok, Talkeetna, Glennallen, Delta Junction, Nenana, Anderson, Healy and Cantwell.

Climate

Interior Alaska experiences seasonal temperature extremes. Winter temperatures in Fairbanks average −24 °C (−12 °F) and summer temperatures average +17 °C (+62 °F). Temperatures there have been recorded as low as −63 °C (−82 °F) in mid-winter, and as high as +38 °C (+101 °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 to 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 four hours of daylight between November 18 and January 24 each winter.

The interior of Alaska is largely underlined by discontinuous permafrost, which grades to continuous permafrost as the Arctic Circle is approached.