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Inland intrusion of marine stratus in south-central Alaska

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-17

GOES-17 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-17 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed a fast-moving jet of marine layer stratus moving westward from the Seward-Chenega area into the far southern Cook Inlet in south-central Alaska on 08 June 2019. A narrow finger of the marine stratus penetrated farther inland across the lower elevations of Iliamna Lake (which is located between Pedro Bay and Kokhanok). Note that at 2245 UTC the GOES-17 Mesoscale Sector was shifted southward, to better monitor a Gulf of Alaska storm.

This inland intrusion of marine stratus was driven by the presence of a warm thermal trough across Interior and Southwest Alaska (surface analyses) — animations of 10-minute GOES-17 Full Disk visible imagery (below) included hourly plots of surface wind barbs and air temperature. Note that some sites farther inland across southwestern Alaska had temperatures in the upper 60s to low 70s F.

GOES-17 "Red" Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-17 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, with hourly surface wind barbs plotted in cyan and temperatures plotted in yellow [click to play animation | MP4]

At Iliamna Airport — located along the northern edge of Lake Iliamna — southeasterly winds gusted to 22 knots at 01 and 03 UTC (below).

Time series plot of surface reports from Iliamna Airport [click to enlarge]

Time series plot of surface reports from Iliamna Airport [click to enlarge]

A similar type of thermally-driven phenomenon is sometimes observed in the San Francisco Bay area, as shown here and here.

Categories: GOES-17