The COLD has snapped...

Fairbanks is shrouded in a dense layer of ice fog during a bitter cold snap

Alaska is widely known as an icy mass of land positioned near the top of the globe. This is probably the general consensus among most people. The past few weeks have only reinforced this reputation. A bitter cold air mass which has been entrenched across this northern landscape rapidly departed to more southerly latitudes today. Temperatures around Fairbanks hovered between -30F(-34C) and -60F(-51C) for nearly two weeks. This was one of the longest cold stretches in the past few decades.

The icy grip was rapidly replaced by tropical air from the south. An unprecedented heat wave has shot temperatures up well above the freezing mark. Some locations experienced a rise of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a matter of days. All-time record high January temperatures were broken at many locations. This is truly a land of extremes.

Here is a graph showing the daily high (red) and low temperatures (blue) from late December to mid-January from a weather station near Fairbanks. The graph indicates that the temperature failed to get warmer than -40F (-40C) for about 10 days. There were also a few days when the mercury did not get warmer than -50F (-45C).

I have some more ice fog pictures from a previous post here: urban contrails

Blue October

An unusual scene for October with vehicles plugged in to keep them warm so they will start. This looks more like a mid-winter scene...not October. It's been unusually chilly in northern Alaska with temperatures well below zero Fahrenheit.

A lot of cool information can be extrapolated from this infrared satellite image of northern Alaska which was aquired early this morning. The darkest pixels indicate warm temperatures while the white/blue pixels are cold. The ribbon of black which is arched across the bottom of the photo is the Yukon River. The river is still mostly ice-free and quite warm relative to the cold arctic air sitting over the region.

The white dedritic fingers in the upper half of the image are the deep cold river valleys in the Brooks Range mountains. The dense cold air sinks to the valley bottoms and remains there until some sort of mechanism kicks it out (warm air, clouds, etc). There are few, if any, ground based observation sites in this area but this satellite image suggests that the coldest (blue pixels) valleys are approaching -50F (-46C) ---> and its only October! These are by far some of the coldest temperatures being experienced in the northern hemisphere today.

Urban Contrails

The University powerplant exhales a steady stream of warm, moist air into the -50F (-46C) arctic atmosphere.

Fairbanks has been swallowed by a sea of dense ice fog the past few days as the thermometer plummeted well below zero. Powerplants, vehicles and anything else that emit water vapor into the atmosphere at these temperatures create a gritty, grey layer of fog that gradually thickens until warmer air arrives. Ice fog is a different breed of fog. It develops around -40F when nearly all supercooled water vapor ceases to exist in the atmosphere...and any moisture in the air becomes entirely composed of ice. So--the fog turns the city into an opaque world where the visibility drops down to near-zero for days on end.

Vehicles essentially create urban contrails--similar to a jet flying at 35,000 feet--that never dissipate. Driving is extremely treacherous under these conditions because the car in front of you can easily become completely obscured by the cloud of steam ejected from the exhaust pipe.

Fairbanks is burried by a sea of ice fog--while the University situated up on a hill basks in crisp clear skies. Driving into the city is like descending into a murky cespool. During long periods of extremely frigid weather the fog is relentless and will remain over town until the cold spell breaks.
The ice fog is mysteriously beautiful from above.

Eternal Frost

The thermometer bottoms out at Obrien Creek near Eagle, Alaska (Larry Taylor photo)

Deep cold gripped Alaska and the Yukon this week. Some of the coldest temperatures reported in North America in nearly 8-years occured the past few days. The weather observer in Chicken, Alaska captured an icy -72F (-57.8C) the past two mornings. This is the coldest official temperature in the US since January 2000, which also occurred in Chicken. This reading is 3 degrees shy of the coldest temperature ever recorded in the US during February. The record for February was -75F (-59.4C) at Tanacross in 1947. And the low temperature reported in Chicken this week is only 8 degrees shy of the all-time record low for the US, which was -80F (-62.2C) set back in January 1971.

This is an infrared satellite image of eastern Alaska and the Yukon Territory. The white pixels represent colder temperatures and the darker pixels are warmer temperatures. This is a fascinating image because you can see that the cold, dense air (white areas) sitting in the valleys. In the upper half of the picture it is possible to make out the dendritic river valleys snaking up into the Brooks Range. The valleys in the Yukon are also clearly visible. The big white area in the middle is the Yukon Flats - a bathtub of cold air. Fort Yukon was reporting -60F when this image was captured. The satellite imagery indicated some of the colder valley locations were reporting temperatures into the -70'sF. Unfortunately, these remotely sensed temperatures are not official since no one was there to actually measure the temperature.

So the temperature plummeted to the -50's F in Fairbanks and I continued my daily routine of commuting to work on my skis. "Are you nuts?"--some may ask. I have found that it takes just as long to warm up the truck and drive. The skis dont need to be plugged in and its much easier on the truck to sit dormant in the driveway. I have been called a freak many times because of my obsession with the cold. Its difficult to convey to people the power and peacefulness of a subzero world. The crisp, dark mornings are something very special to me as the icy air bites my face and fills my lungs with every deep breath--and the last green curtains of aurora dance over my shoulders before being washed away by the first rays of sunlight.

I will end this post with a poem passed on to me by my friend Lena:

Cold Poem

Cold now. Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.

Mary Oliver

A cold day in US history

January 23, 1971: Today marks the 37th anniversary of the official US record low temperature of -80º F (-62.4º C) recorded at Prospect Creek Camp, Alaska.

The 37 year old US record low temperature was captured by a weather observer at the Alaska pipeline construction camp near the confluence of Prospect Creek and the Jim River. The camp has long been dismantled and all that remains is a large gravel pad surrounded by the encroaching boreal forest.

Prospect Creek Camp was located at the bottom of the valley in the distance. This is the winter road to Bettles and the camp was situated near the start of the road.

Snag, Yukon Territory, Canada: -81º F (-62.8º C) - This abandoned airstrip near the Alaska border is the site where the all-time record low temperature for North America was recorded on February 3, 1947. The airstrip was built as part of the Lend-Lease program where US pilots ferried planes to the Soviet Union and other allied nations. Check out Ned's Alaska Science Forum article about Snag, the coldest place in North America.

Oimyakon, Russia: -96ºF (-71.2º C) - This small village in northeastern Siberia holds the record for the coldest temperature in the northern hemisphere. The bone chilling record low occurred on January 26, 1926. There is ongoing debate about this record though since it was apparently obtained by extrapolation because the thermometer didn't read that low. Oimyakon is regarded as the coldest permanently inhabited place on the planet. In January 2004 I visited Valeri, the official weather observer in the village. He is certainly acclimated to the -58ºF temperature as he casually poses with his coat unbuttoned.

The -96ºF recorded at Oimyakon is debatable--but officially, Oimyakon did bottom out at -90º F (-67.7º C) on February 6, 1933. At the weather office in Yakutsk I was blessed with the opportunity to fondle the original handwritten form scribbled on by the observer in 1933. This temperature was actually recorded at the Tomtor airport about 30km away. The village is down the valley and presumably experiences slightly colder temperatures than Tomtor. So the debate over the actual record low will forever continue. Interestingly, the Tomtor airport was another stop for planes along the Lend-Lease route, similar to Snag, Yukon Terr.

Vostok Station, Antarctica: -129º F (-89.4º) - And the coldest temperature ever recorded was measured at the Russian research station located high on the Antarctic plateau on July 21, 1983. (Nope...I didn't take this shot...but maybe some day I will visit Vostok station).

The meeting of Farenheit and Celsius

Brrrrr....2pm and the temperature was hovering at a chilly -45ºF (-42.8ºC) this afternoon. What most Alaskans would term as "real cold" arrived this week. This is when the thermometer plunges to the point where the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales cross paths---the magical number of -40ºF (-40ºC).

I snapped the above shot when I was out snowshoeing on a trail just down the hill from my house in mid-afternoon. Only 200 vertical feet higher up at the house it was a balmy -28ºF (-33.3ºC) -- almost 20 degrees warmer. And if you go up higher in the hills the readings were even warmer. The dense, cold air sinks to the low lying areas (or valley bottoms) and sits there until clouds or a warm breeze can scour it away. The deep cold is going to be short lived but the forecast is for temperatures to remain from around zero and below for a while.

The sun at high noon peers through the thickening ice fog.

This time of the year the sun barely climbs above the horizon for a few hours and provides absolutely zero warming. So the temperatures will not budge upward until a warmer airmass arrives. This is different from more southerly latitudes where the heat from the sun will warm things up during the day. We wont see any heating effect from the sun until sometime in late January. So during mid-winter in far north its pointless to forecast afternoon high and nighttime low temperatures because the high and low for the day can occur at anytime.