{"id":69227,"date":"2026-03-01T23:29:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T23:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=69227"},"modified":"2026-03-02T21:04:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T21:04:50","slug":"mountain-wave-cloud-south-of-the-brooks-range-in-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/69227","title":{"rendered":"Mountain wave cloud south of the Brooks Range in Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div style=\"width: 3002px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/03\/260301_goes18_infrared_waterVapor_AK.mp4\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/03\/260301_18z_ir_AK.png\" width=\"2992\" height=\"1680\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">10-minute GOES-18 Infrared and Water Vapor images, from 0400-2300 UTC on 01 March; rawinsonde sites are plotted in red [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>10-minute Full Disk scan GOES-18 <em>(GOES-West)<\/em>\u00a0Infrared and Water Vapor images <em><strong>(above)<\/strong><\/em> showed the evolution of a mountain wave cloud south of the Brooks Range in northern Alaska on 01 March 2026. The coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures were -61C (darker shades of red).<\/p>\n<p>A toggle between GOES-18 Water Vapor and Infrared images at 1200 UTC <em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0included a Topography image and 700 hPa wind barbs from the GFS model &#8212; which showed northerly winds flowing across the terrain of the Brooks Range, with the mountain wave cloud displaced to the south.<\/p>\n<p><div style=\"width: 3002px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/03\/260301_goes18_waterVapor_infrared_topography_700hpaWinds_AK_anim.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/03\/260301_goes18_waterVapor_infrared_topography_700hpaWinds_AK_anim.gif\" width=\"2992\" height=\"1680\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">GOES-18 Water Vapor and Infrared images at 1200 UTC on 01 March, in addition to a topography image &#8212; with plots of GFS model 700 hPa wind barbs [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>A toggle between GOES-18 Infrared and Water Vapor images at 1800 UTC <em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0included an image of 500 hPa Vertical Velocity &#8212; the bulk of the mountain wave cloud was co-located with the zone of middle-tropospheric upward vertical velocity (brighter shades of green).<\/p>\n<p><div style=\"width: 3002px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/03\/260301_goes18_waterVapor_infrared_500hpaVerticalVelocity_AK_anim.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/03\/260301_goes18_waterVapor_infrared_500hpaVerticalVelocity_AK_anim.gif\" width=\"2992\" height=\"1680\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">GOES-18 Infrared and Water Vapor images at 1800 UTC on 01 March, along with an image of GFS model 500 hPa Vertical Velocity [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>A Suomi-NPP VIIRS Infrared image <strong><em>(below)<\/em><\/strong> displayed the mountain wave cloud at 1402 UTC. This cloud appeared to play a role in keeping the surface air temperature at Fort Yukon (PFYU) significantly warmer than surrounding sites (by limiting radiational cooling across the Yukon Flats).<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 3002px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/03\/260301_1402utc_viirs_infrared_AK.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/03\/260301_1402utc_viirs_infrared_AK.png\" width=\"2992\" height=\"1680\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Suomi-NPP VIIRS Infrared image at 1402 UTC on 01 March, with METAR surface reports plotted in blue [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>10-minute Full Disk scan GOES-18 (GOES-West)\u00a0Infrared and Water Vapor images (above) showed the evolution of a mountain wave cloud south of the Brooks Range in northern Alaska on 01 March 2026. The coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures were -61C (darker shades of red). A toggle between GOES-18 Water Vapor and Infrared images at 1200 UTC [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":69233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,114,49,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arctic","category-goes-18","category-suomi_npp","category-viirs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69227","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=69227"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69237,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69227\/revisions\/69237"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}