Seasonal Inversion

As we await the Great 2012-13 Mid-Winter Warm-up, here's a quick and easy way of assessing  daily inversion strength in Fairbanks-land over a seasonal basis. This is simply the difference in mean daily between the Fairbanks Airport and Keystone Ridge. Just a reminder: Fairbanks Airport elevation is 440' MSL and  Keystone Ridge, 14 miles northwest of the Airport is at 1600' MSL. Importantly, the climate day is the same, so this is a straight apples-to-apples comparison.

Until the snow cover was established in mid-October, the Airport was generally warmer than the Ridge. Since November 1st, the median "inversion strength" has been 15F. Only the snow of earlier this month was enough to completely disrupt the inversion. The strongest daily inversion was on December 22nd, when the Airport had a daily mean temperature of -39F and Keystone Ridge had a daily mean of -4F.