By Grace Veenstra This article can also be found in UAF’s Aurora magazine in the Fall 2022 issue, and in the IAWF’s Wildfire magazine in the 2023 Q1 issue. Dynamic. That is how Alaska smokejumper Pat Johnson describes wildland fire in Alaska. “It may be relatively calm, a little smokey,” Johnson said. “The fire is […]
Heat Point Mapping: Using Satellites to Track Wildland Fire 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 »
GINA collects satellite data around the clock from the satellites that pass over Alaska every day. This graphic shows the number of VIIRS infrared passes received each day by GINA’s Direct Broadcast antennas. The North Slope of Alaska into the Arctic Ocean is the most frequently covered area, with around 16-18 passes per day. Radiating
VIIRS Pass Frequency Read More »
The Tatlawiksuk Fire, 41 miles south of McGrath, has been burning steadily (as of posting) since June 4th, sparked by the recent lightning storms in Southwest Alaska last week. These VIIRS animations of DayLandCloudFire (left) and the i04 band (right) show the change of the fire perimeter (in bright red) from June 8th to June
On Fire Pixel Saturation Read More »
The fire imagery can be a little deceiving sometimes. As seen in these images, something that appears like smoke is streaming from the peak of Denali. Not to worry, it didn’t suddenly become a volcano, instead it’s due to a little trick of the clouds. VIIRS i04 band (3.74 um), 21:00 UTC 01 June 2022
Mountain Smoke Plume, Or Is It? Read More »
Clouds are covering much of Interior and Northern Alaska after a week of clear weather. This is a DayLandCloud RGB image which is made from three VIIRS satellite bands assigned to red, green, and blue components to produce a false color image. The 1.6 um band is assigned red, the 0.87um band to green, and
Early August Showers in the Northern and Interior Alaska Read More »
Jen Delamere and Chris Waigle summarized their Science for Alaska lecture “Firewatch: Fire landscapes from Air and Space” on KTVF with Ryan Osborne. Tune in for a few minutes of a fun question and answer series
KTVF Science For Alaska Read More »
This satellite imagery composite at 1900 UTC 20 Nov 2020 shows the clouds and precipitation associated with a mature storm in the Bering Sea with a front extending into the Gulf of Alaska. The gray shading is an infrared view of clouds and land areas, with a colorized view of the MiRS microwave rain rates
