{"id":64975,"date":"2025-05-26T23:32:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T23:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=64975"},"modified":"2025-05-30T17:01:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T17:01:06","slug":"strong-thunderstorms-in-the-fairbanks-alaska-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/64975","title":{"rendered":"Strong thunderstorms in the Fairbanks, Alaska area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div style=\"width: 2998px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2025\/05\/250526_g18_ir_vis_AK.mp4\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2025\/05\/250526_2055z_g18_ir_vis_AK.png\" width=\"2988\" height=\"1662\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">1-minute GOES-18 Clean Infrared Window (10.3 \u00b5m, top) and Red Visible (0.64 \u00b5m, bottom) images, from 1910-2300 UTC on 26 May [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 <em>(GOES-West)<\/em> Infrared and Visible images <em><strong>(above)<\/strong><\/em> showed the development of thunderstorms that moved southwestward across the Fairbanks North Star Borough during the early afternoon hours on 26 May 2025 &#8212; producing <a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2025\/05\/250526_pafg_lsr.text\"><strong>small hail and heavy rainfall<\/strong><\/a> at several locations. The coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures associated with these thunderstorms were around -55\u00baC. It bears mention that thunderstorm activity in the Fairbanks area is very unusual during the month of May.<\/p>\n<p>A sequence of Suomi-NPP VIIRS Infrared Window and Visible images <em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em> displayed 3 views of these thunderstorms &#8212; and without the <a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2025\/05\/GOES18_parallax_30kft_AK.png\"><strong>parallax<\/strong><\/a> (from <a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/goes\/webapps\/parallax\/overview.html\"><strong>this site<\/strong><\/a>) that is inherent with GOES-18 imagery at the high latitudes of Alaska, the storms were situated more directly over the locations that reported hail (Fox, Fairbanks, North Pole and Moose Lake). The coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures sensed with VIIRS instrument were around -60\u00baC.<\/p>\n<p><div style=\"width: 2998px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2025\/05\/250526_suomiNPP_viirs_infrared_visible_AK_anim.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2025\/05\/250526_suomiNPP_viirs_infrared_visible_AK_anim.gif\" width=\"2988\" height=\"1662\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sequence of Suomi-NPP VIIRS Infrared Window (11.45 \u00b5m, top) and Visible (0.64 \u00b5m, bottom) images that were valid at 1927, 2108 and 2248 UTC on 26 May [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>According to a plot of rawinsonde data from Fairbanks at 0000 UTC on 27 May <em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em>, the GOES-18 cloud-top 10.3 \u00b5m brightness temperature of -55\u00baC closely corresponded to the altitude of the tropopause &#8212; while the Suomi-NPP cloud-top 11.45 \u00b5m brightness temperature of -60\u00baC represented a tropopause overshoot of approximately 1 km.<\/p>\n<p><div style=\"width: 2998px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2025\/05\/250527_0000utc_pafa_raob.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2025\/05\/250527_0000utc_pafa_raob.png\" width=\"2988\" height=\"1662\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Plot of rawinsonde data from Fairbanks, Alaska at 0000 UTC on 27 May [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>It is notable that the Total Precipitable Water (PW) value of 0.64&#8243; on the Fairbanks sounding was in the 90th percentile of all 0000 UTC soundings on 27 May <em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 3242px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2025\/05\/250527_0000utc_pafa_tpw_climatology.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2025\/05\/250527_0000utc_pafa_tpw_climatology.png\" width=\"3232\" height=\"2080\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Climatology of Total Precipitable Water (PW) for Soundings at Fairbanks (PAFA), with the values for all soundings at 0000 UTC on 27 May highlighted [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) Infrared and Visible images (above) showed the development of thunderstorms that moved southwestward across the Fairbanks North Star Borough during the early afternoon hours on 26 May 2025 &#8212; producing small hail and heavy rainfall at several locations. The coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures associated with these thunderstorms were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":65005,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114,49,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-goes-18","category-suomi_npp","category-viirs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64975"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65079,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64975\/revisions\/65079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}