By Sentinel Staff
Sitka can expect a couple days more of below-freezing temps and clear skies while heading into near-record cold on Thursday before clouds roll in.
“It’s cold, but we’ve seen colder,” said Caleb Cravens, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Juneau.
It’s been as cold as 11 degrees in recent days, and the forecast is for a continued downward trend to a nighttime low of 8 degrees on Thursday. That’s close to Sitka’s record low for that date: 7 degrees on Jan. 16, 1974.
Overcast skies and warmer temperatures are forecast for Friday, with more snow expected Saturday.
“Temperatures are going to be a little warmer than they are now,” Cravens said, noting they’re still expected to be below freezing. “You’ll be seeing the cloud cover increasing by this weekend.”
The cold weather is being caused by a high pressure system coming in from the Yukon Territory, a trend that started last week and is expected to continue another few days. Cravens said this year’s average of a little less than 23 degrees for the first 14 days of January is below the average of 36 degrees for that time period.
With temperatures ranging between 11 and 35 degrees (as measured at the airport) this past week, some Sitka companies are seeing an uptick in weather-related business.
Schmolck Mechanical has been busy, with a crew of three responding to some 20 to 30 calls a day for problems caused by the intense cold.
“We’re super-busy,” Schmolck President Gary Smith said. “We end up having to prioritize ‘no heat’ over smaller problems. There is a lot of prioritizing over who’s in the worst shape.”
With temperatures dropping to the low teens, oil furnaces, heat pumps, propane boilers and oil stoves are working overtime, which can lead to new problems.
“The units are working harder than they ever worked before, and things start breaking,” Smith said. “They’re not used to going full blast.”
On top of that, there are the expected calls about frozen pipes. Schmolck does not respond to these calls since it can take days to track down where the problems are. Once the temperatures start rising, the calls will really start coming in.
“Then it gets really crazy,” Smith said. “Sprinkler heads you don’t know have frozen and broken, remote hose bibs, sometimes people have sinks they don’t know have frozen ... That’s some of the excitement that’s on its way.”
Most Sitka homes are not built for this kind of weather, he noted, since it rarely gets this cold. Water lines in a crawl space don’t generally freeze in Sitka, except on the few occasions when temperatures are like this.
“When it’s this cold this long, it starts to get you,” Smith said.
Leaving a faucet trickling will help stave off freezing pipes, and it’s also a good idea to make regular checks on vacant homes, he said.
Sitka retailers are seeing the effect of the cold weather on the things people are buying. At Spenard Builders Supply, winter equipment has run short but rapid restocking is a high priority, said contractor sales specialist Adora Dumag.
Dumag said they sold out of snow shovels, ice melt and ice cleats for shoes.
“We actually have a huge lot of snow shovels we’re trying to get Goldstreaked in,” Dumag said.
She added that inventories of hand and toe warmers, as well as space heaters and pipe insulation have run very low, but that restocking is imminent.
“That’s a big deal, pipes freezing out and everything,” Dumag said. “We’ve got some (pipe insulation), but if you look at our insulation aisle, it’s completely bare pegs everywhere.”
Noting that temperatures are “definitely colder” than Sitkans are used to, Dumag said she’s trying to anticipate people’s needs for the immediate future.
“Our community needs this, we’ve got Sitkans who need to be able to dig out their driveways or heat their homes. It’s really crucial,” she said.
Over at True Value, employees are feeling a similar crunch.
Store manager Amanda Martin said that last Tuesday she made an emergency call to the regional distribution center in Oregon to Goldstreak 34 snow shovels.
“I almost ordered 100,” said Martin, but thought,“‘that’s ridiculous.’”
Martin said the 34 shovels arrived last Thursday, and were all sold within 20 minutes.
Since the cold snap started, True Value has twice run out of ice melt, but new supplies are expected by the end of the week, Martin said.
She described the past week as “stressful,” and added, “All I can hope is that neighbors are borrowing each other’s shovels!”
