Thursday, November 29, 2012

Getting Colder

It's getting to be positively winter-like in eastern Interior Alaska, with temperatures falling past 40 below this morning in some of the colder spots. Here's a NOAA-16 Polar Orbiter infrared image from 940am Thursday (White is colder, dark warmer). There are practically no clouds over the Interior except for a patch northeast of Fort Yukon.
Courtesy NWS Alaska Region
Some low temperatures this morning include:

Chicken Co-op: -52F
Tok CWOP: -50F
Dawson, YT: -46F
Eagle Co-op: -44F
Northway: -42F
Coal Creek RAWS: -42F

The low of -30F through 9am at the Fairbanks Airport is the lowest of the season thus far.
at

4 comments:

  1. Richard JamesNovember 29, 2012 at 5:38 PM

    Very impressive indeed...

    It seems like you have listed Chicken a number of time in recent months with some of the coldest temperatures. I imagine it is often a cold spot, but is it typically colder than locations on the Yukon Flats in winter? I'm curious to learn what is in fact the coldest interior location in the winter months.

    ReplyDelete
  2. RickNovember 30, 2012 at 10:32 AM

    Richard, I'll put a post on this question. The short answer though is that the coldest communities don't have long term obs (e.g. Chicken) and the coldest places are uninhabited.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Richard JamesNovember 30, 2012 at 11:06 AM

    Thanks, makes sense... would be interesting also to contrast low-level versus higher-altitude locations - I see Chicken is above 500 m elevation, so obviously extreme cold is not confined to only low elevations in interior AK.

    ReplyDelete
  4. RickNovember 30, 2012 at 1:17 PM

    Richard—long post on this question now up. Does that help?

    ReplyDelete