The 2026 wildfire season is underway in Alaska, with an official start date of April 1, 2026. As we look ahead to this summer, let’s take a look back at last fire season. This animation shows a time lapse of fire heat points detected by GINA over the course if the 2025 Alaska fire season, […]
2025 Fire Points Video Read More »
This VIIRS DayLandCloud RGB captures the southerly extent of Bering Sea ice of the south western coast of Alaska, as of January 14, 2026. The DayLandCloud RGB is used to distinguish snow and ice from clouds. Sea ice is pictured in darker blue while snow on land is captured in a brighter cyan. Like the
Visualizing the southerly extent of Bering Sea Ice with VIIRS Read More »
Fire season is in full swing here in Alaska! The TrueColor RGB shows a scene similar to what the eye would see. Smoke is a wispy light grey color while clouds are brighter white. The Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) product is designed to provide a more quantitative view of smoke, ranging from thin in green
Aerosol Optical Depth Product in Use for Monitoring Smoke Read More »
Starting June 21 and updated every Monday, fire points videos will be posted to keep track of Alaska’s fire season. Consistent with last year’s summary, each video shows a timelapse of the fire heat points detected by GINA over the course of the 2024 Alaska Fire Season. Recent fire points are displayed as bright red
Fire Season 2024 Updates Read More »
Remnants of old fires from 2023 are getting active again in northeast British Columbia. Called “zombie fires” for how they overwinter, these fires continue to burn even under snow. This image from May 7th 2024 shows the VIIRS DayFire product overlaid with VIIRS fire points, highlighting where the reanimated fires are burning on the edges
Zombie Fires Becoming Active in British Columbia Read More »
This image from July 13th 2023 shows a DayLandCloud RGB overlaid with with a new Snow Fall Rate product to show snow fall over the ice pack (cyan-blue-green) and a MiRS RainRate showing precipitation over western and eastern Alaska (pink-blue-cyan). This combination of products enables us to see what kind of if any precipitation is
DayLandCloud with Snowfall and Rainfall Overlay Read More »
What does Alaska in winter look like on a cloud free day? Like this! NOAA-20 captured this True Color RGB image on February 2, 2023 at 23:26 UTC, which shows much of Alaska free of thick clouds. While there is some thin cloud cover in the Interior, we can still see the outline of the
Cloud-Free Day in the Alaskan Winter Read More »
The first snow of winter has started to accumulate across Alaska. This True Color RGB image taken on October 13 using VIIRS on the NOAA-20 satellite shows Cook Inlet and the Kenai Peninsula, with winter beginning to take hold. The mountains of the Kenai, Talkeetna and the Alaska Range are capped with snow, but give
Season’s First Snow in Cook Inlet Read More »
It’s fire season, and that means its time for fire detection. This image is a DayLandCloudFire RGB of the Hog Butte fire, overlaid with heat points. The red underneath the cyan clouds is the fire and burned ground below. Notice that there are far fewer points than might be expected! Clouds can be a problem with heat
DayLandCloud and Fire Read More »
It was declared green-up in Fairbanks on May 17, 2022 but there’s still snow across Alaska. This RGB image taken on May 17 using VIIRS with the NOAA-20 satellite shows different types of snow. Dark blue is old or wet snow & light blue is new or dry snow. High cirrus clouds that are composed
May’s Spring Snowmelt Across Alaska Read More »
