Weekend Sees Over 2 Inches of Rain, High Winds

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Category: News

Created on Monday, 14 October 2024 14:35

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By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
    High winds and heavy rainfall hit Sitka from late Friday night through Saturday as an atmospheric river washed over Southeast, dropping 2.28 inches of rain on Sitka in a 24-hour period, National Weather Service data show.
    Though the storm was fierce, with one gust reaching 65 miles per hour at the weather monitoring station at the airport and sustained winds of up to 40, no major damage was reported in Sitka.
    The storm was fairly typical for an autumn storm in the region, NWS meteorologist Pete Boyd told the Sentinel from his Juneau office this morning.
    “It was a very strong low pressure system that moved up into the Gulf. This is fall, and we get these all the time,” Boyd said. “So this is not out of the ordinary; this is now seasonal. The line is ‘the Gulf of Alaska is where storms go to die.’ So they just track up from the Pacific and head straight for the Gulf, and that’s one of the reasons we’re a rainforest.”
    Another 0.68 inch of rain fell Sunday, bringing Sitka’s monthly figure to 7.67 inches as of the end of Sunday, while in an average October, NWS records show, Sitka would receive 5.11 inches of precipitation by Oct. 13.
    But it was the wind that drew the agency’s attention over the weekend.
    “We were getting more interested in the winds that were coming out, especially since we’re now getting into the windier type of fall, we’ll start seeing more of these wind systems moving through… A lot of moderate, heavy rain (on Saturday), but nowhere, nothing, getting into any kind of records, or any record rainfall, or anything like that,” the meteorologist said.
    On Saturday, Sitka’s landslide risk dashboard ticked up to medium, indicating that there was some slide risk and that slides have occurred here under similar past conditions, the dashboard site, https://sitkalandslide.org/, states.
    The National Weather Service doesn’t predict landslide risk.
    “It’s kind of outside of our wheelhouse. We can look at the meteorological conditions and say, ‘Hey, these are meeting criteria,’ but within that, that’s still a combination of geologists, hydrologists,” Boyd said. “It takes multiple factors. So that’s one thing about the landslides, but with the Sitka landslide notification system, that’s an incredible system.”
    Boyd was not aware of any landslide damage in the region caused by Saturday’s atmospheric river.
    The current forecast for Sitka calls for showers through the week, with no sunny skies in the local 10-day forecast.
    More information, including past weather and upcoming forecasts, is published online at weather.gov.