Thursday, December 20, 2018

Winter's Weak Sunshine

Here's a lovely webcam view from UAF's West Ridge at about solar noon today, after clouds cleared out following a lengthy period of light snow in the last couple of days.  At this point on the calendar, the sun rises a mere 2° above the horizon at noon in Fairbanks.


The temperature at UAF was about 0°F when the picture was taken, but not far away at the valley-level international airport the temperature has been dropping steadily today as clouds diminish and solar insolation remains effectively zero even at noon.  The chart below shows that nearly constant temperatures prevailed for more than a day and a half while cloud and snow persisted, but the end of the snow presaged a sharp cooling trend.  It's classic interior Alaska weather in the depths of winter.


1 comment:

  1. The inversion at the valley surface wasn't bad at 3 pm in Fairbanks. Local power plant exhaust plumes were still going straight up. Someday the new mega-million power generation facility at the UAF will actually function and contribute to the local fog and whatever. Coal fired BTW but still not operational.

    Gary

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