Low Coastal Cloud Ceiling on Landing

Observation by John Henry:

Flying from Anchorage, AK to Unalakleet, AK on Wednesday, September 12th, departing around 2 PM in the afternoon, the Anchorage weather was fair with somewhat clear skies and the weather forecast in Unalakleet at the time was cloudy. Upon reaching the coast near Unalakleet, there was a vast expanse of white, puffy clouds. What was intriguing was how close the clouds were to the land. When the plane broke through the clouds, I noticed how low the clouds were and that the bottom of the cloud layer were hitting the nearby hills at their apex height. The plane landed into Unalakleet around 4 PM. Used SOA Alaska Mapper's ArcGis USA Top Map to get estimate height and distance.

Richard Thoman, Alaska Climate Specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, writes:

The ocean-land intersection can produce very interesting patterns of clouds as thin layers of moisture, fueled by evaporation from the ocean surface, interact with the terrain and (at this time of year) greater heating over the land. These marine-feed layer in turn interacts with the larger scale weather systems and wind flow to create sometimes persistent areas of low cloud and fog not from from persistent clear areas. 10/5/2018