Not Quite Like 2010…But Still…

Here's a composite graphic showing 500mb heights for the November 2010 rain event and the Friday morning GFS forecast valid Sunday 3pm. They patterns are similar, with huge ridge in the Gulf of Alaska, subtropical origin of the flow on the west side of the ridge and a shortwave trough turning northeast near the west end of the Alaska Peninsula. The most important difference for Fairbanks-land is that in the 2010 event there was no significant chinook as the winds were way around to WSW. This case will be much closer to the downslope edge, though at this point my take is that it IS going to rain some in Fairbanks Sunday/Monday. Quite unlikely to be as much rain as November 2010, but I'm banking on roads being terrible early next week.