Perhaps the best way to understand weather in a certain location is to compare it with another. At roughly 59 degrees N and 153 degrees W, Augustine Island, Ak is located at a latitude where the subpolar lows meet the westerlies, and lies almost directly in the Aleutian Low in the winter, and affected by the Pacific High in the summer. Contrarily, Dublin, Ireland, is located slightly below Augustine on the latitude spectrum at 53 degrees N and 6 degrees W longitude. These coordinates put it in an interesting location, in between the Icelandic Low and Azores High in the winter, and largely affected by the Bermuda High in the summer. Below gives a visual contrast of each location in winter. Augustine appears to look mild with its clear skies, however in the winter clear skies can be bitter cold in Alaska. When it is not in the middle of a mid-latitude cyclone, clear skies indicate cold weather. Dublin does not experience the extreme temperature changes because of its lower latitude in that instead it is dominated by the westerlies and high pressure systems which keep the climate relatively mild. Although they are both influenced by maritime systems that create rather moist and dreary climates, Mount Augustine is slightly further north and is further from the Pacific High, so it experiences the extreme cold in the winter that Dublin is not impacted by.

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Picture taken from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration
http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/tvwx.php?img=tomorrow

As stated previously, Augustine Island is located in an air mass known as the Aleution Low, a semi-permanent Polar Air Mass that is characteristic of the Arctic region, although Augustine is further south from the Arctic Circle, it is still part of this air mass. As a result of this, places in the Aleution Low are almost constantly hit by low pressure mid-latitude cyclones that originiate in the North Pacific during the winter. On Tuesdays weather map, this is illustrated as the cold front that made its way from northeast Asia begins to occlude the maritime polar warm front, creating the midlatitude cyclone, which today produced snow around much of the low pressure system.

A picture of a low pressure winter system from the NASA Earth Observatory in the Gulf of Alaska really encompasses the term Mid-Latitude Cyclone.

Picture by Ian Shive

Above is the Aleutian Range shown at sunset. This range makes up the Aleutain Archipelago and extends into the Alaska Range as it makes its way inland. Like Denver, which lies east of the Rockies, Kachemak Bay(Augustine Island) and the Cook Inlet often experience clear skies when the Aleutian Range to the west is receiving snow. This is apparent in the weather map above. This location is interesting because it is affected by mountian ranges, the Bering Sea, and Continental and Oceanic Air Masses which are both frigid and mild.