Living this far north means that the Alaskan winters are dark, with very little direct sunlight. This limits the use of some satellite products, such as True Color or the DayLandCloud, which rely on visible light wavelengths to capture images. However, many satellite products can continue to operate even at night, which is invaluable to us here in the arctic winters!
The DayNight Band (DNB) and SnowCloud Discriminator are two products that can operate at night, and are very useful to meteorologists and others in Alaska. In the DNB nighttime view at left, you can see Southern and Interior Alaska, with the lights of Anchorage and Fairbanks showing up as the white splashes. On the right, the SnowCloud Discriminator shows high clouds to the northwest (in pink) and low clouds in Southeast (in yellow).
If we look more closely at the interior, the light gray in the DayNight Band suggests clouds in the valleys around Eagle and along the Yukon River between Fort Yukon and Beaver. The SnowCloud Discriminator highlights these low clouds in a yellowish green, but the Nighttime Microphysics product, another product useful at night, makes the low fog in the area pop from the background in a blaze of gold.
All of these products are valuable and useful on their own, but together they create a more complete picture of the state!
A DayNight Band image of Interior Alaska, taken November 6th, 2022 at 13:11 UTC. Clouds can be seen as light, misting grey across the image, particularly at the far left and in the Yukon River valley.
A Nighttime Microphysics image of Interior Alaska, taken November 6th, 2022 at 13:11 UTC. Low clouds or fog can be seen as light yellow, located in the Yukon River valley around Eagle, Venetie, and between Fort Yukon and Beaver. High clouds are distinguished as a darker red and are found at the far left of the image.