In the first half of 1969, I was living in Anchorage, Alaska.

On June 14, 1969, Anchorage hit was was then the highest temperature ever recorded up to that time, 85°F (29°C).

Note that Anchorage is 372 miles (599 km) south of the Arctic Circle.

Today, in it hit  86.5°F (30.3°C) in Nizhnyaya Pesha, just north of the Arctic Circle.

We are completely screwed:

It’s only May, but it feels like summer has arrived in my hometown of Baltimore. Since I woke up, I’ve been counting the hours until I can drink iced cocktails on my deck while wearing a sundress. Can you blame me? It’s 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.7 degrees Celsius) out.

There’s another reason I really need a drink, though: That’s the same temperature it is in the Arctic today. Welcome to climate hell.

In fact, parts of the Arctic circle got even warmer than that on Wednesday. It was 86.5 degrees (30.3 degrees Celsius) in the Russian town of Nizhnyaya Pesha, and 91 degrees Fahrenheit (32.3 degrees Celsius) in the nearby town of Kolezma. The wildly high temperatures came as part of an ongoing heat wave in the region.

According to meteorologist Scott Duncan, these temperatures are between 37 and 43 degrees Fahrenheit (20 to 24 degrees Celsius) hotter than the region’s average temperature for this time of year. As Duncan said on Twitter, this Arctic heat is “truly exceptional for any time of the year but mind-boggling for May.” But though they’re bizarre, they’re also a sign of the broader changes happening in the Arctic, which is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the globe.

I have a suggestion:  Let’s send all the anthropogenic climate change deniers to a penal colony in Nizhnyaya Pesha for the rest of their lives.