Canadian Wind Chill

Chilly weather is continuing in the Alaskan interior for now, but a consideration of current conditions about 1500 miles to the east provides some interesting perspective.  This morning the town of Baker Lake, Nunavut, reported sustained winds of 40 mph along with a temperature of -38 °F, which equates to a wind chill of -82 °F.

What's remarkable is that Baker Lake is close to sea-level (elevation 18 m), in a region of relatively subdued topography, and is about 35 miles south of the latitude of Fairbanks.  It is doubtful whether any low-elevation sub-Arctic observing site in Alaska has ever observed such a combination of cold and wind - though I imagine it may occasionally happen in regions of terrain-channeled flow in the southeast.

Here's this morning's upper-air sounding from Baker Lake (courtesy of U-Wyoming) and a table of hourly surface observations (courtesy of Weather Underground).  Amazingly, the wind chill is lower at the surface than at 500 mb.