Here's a plot of the low level temperatures from the Monday morning sounding at Fairbanks. This isn't, overall, an especially strong inversion by Interior Alaska standards, but the steep temperature increase of 23 degrees in just 76 meters is quite impressive. Clouds moved in Monday morning and weakened the inversion in by the afternoon.
Will this November be as cold as last year's? I can't keep up with the fast fluctuating 10 day forecast on wunderground. It seems like the advanced forecast is never reliable, as I see different sets of forecasts everyday.
ReplyDeleteLast November was in the coldest 10% of Novembers, with a monthly average temperature of -8.2F, and there has not been back to back Novembers with an average temperature in each month of -8F or lower, so first guess would be no, this November will not be as cold as last year.
ReplyDeleteThat said, through the first 13 days of November 2012 the average temperature has been -1.8, which is eight degrees below normal, and a colder airmass will be moving in over the next couple days. So if (a big if) the large scale pattern remains a cool one, there is some chance that this month could be as cold as last November.
I don't know how weather underground comes up with their ten day forecast. In any case, there is typically little predictably in Alaska (and northwest North America/northeast Asia in general) beyond 5 or 6 days. Once in a while there is some skill, but this is not likely to be one of them, as convection in the western tropical Pacific is not been well handled by the US models at present. Does this help?