Looks like an 3 dog night tonight
Looks like our normal wintery weather has decided to come home. Yesterday we saw an high of Minus 9 and the low was minus 19. In fact at 0200 we were at -15 then the old mercury decided to plummet. Bottom out at minus 26.7 and the high today was well it didn’t rise much. minus 22.3 at 1430 hours and is minus 25 at present as the sun drops below the horizon. The NWS issued an wind chill advisory as I am typing this. We are expected to see wind chills in the minus 40 to minus 50 degree range. The forecast model for us is way off again as per sec. it calling for high of -16 today with an low of -18 and they closed some of the remote weather balloon sites to save money. Never have been able to understand government run programs. Seem like they are more for the bean counters then to serve the people who pay there wages. According to news article they can do the same thing with Satellites. Yet 45 miles from Fairbanks they can’t even come close. In fact when I lived in Ketchikan the Canadian forecast where closer to what we had then what Juneau issued for forecasts.
High pressure has parked up over Nuvuk ( Point Barrow) with ridge extending down to Galena at the 500mb level and be moving west. A trough is digging into the Yukon Territory and allowing the colder temps to move into the eastern interior tonight. With clear skies the temps are expected to drop well below the normal for this time of year.
At the surface wind patterns from Tanana Valley Jet will keep the wind chill in the -40 range and also bring low temps to soe areas reaching down to the -40 or better mark. Old mecury thermometer at those temps is useless. It freezes at -35.
No precip is expected this week and around Friday evening an southernly flow is expected to kick in. This will be bringing Chinook winds down from Isabel Pass and warm the Valley area back up as the wind scours out the low lying areas.
Temperature -25.5
DWPT -30.3
Humidity 77%
Winds Calm
Barometer 30.14 and rising
Soil Temp 32 F at 18 inches below surface.
Soil Moisture 200 (Yep it frozen)
My prediction is about -33 or so for tonight and as the old timers call it an 3dog night.
Stay warm and safe
Keep an log on the fire and light in the window.
John
One thought on “Looks like an 3 dog night tonight”
Great report John. Hope you can enjoy your upcoming 3 dog night. Do you have 3 dogs at your disposal to use to keep warm? Are your local rivers finally frozen up tight? Ours have gotten that way the past few days, just in time for a big thaw, though we had a small ice storm on Monday in transition. Do you get a good feed on local NOAA weather radio there in the Salcha basin? Are there any more entries on your timeline? Looks like there is one below -70 but it is cut off. Is that timeline mounted on the side of your house? Take care, put a few logs on the fire, esp if you don’t have 3 dogs to keep you warm. Kevin