Prior to Monday’s two strikes, the last time a commercial flight was struck by lightning in Southeast was Alaska Airlines Flight 67, shortly after takeoff from Sitka on November 4, 2014.

Air travel was disrupted in Southeast Alaska Monday afternoon (12-19-16) after an Alaska Airlines jet was struck by lightning between Juneau and Sitka.

Flight 62 was delayed on the ground in Sitka over five hours while a replacement aircraft was delivered. In the meantime, Flight 66 was struck en route between Anchorage and Cordova.

Although aircraft strikes are relatively rare, lightning during a Southeast Alaska winter storm is common.


Downloadable audio.

So, it basically takes two things to make thunderstorms in the Gulf of Alaska.

“We have cold air aloft and we still have a relatively warm sea surface temperature.”

This is Joel Curtis, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Juneau.

I reach him at his desk just as he’s issuing the day’s aviation forecast. Curtis was a navigator on C-130’s in the Air Force. He spent a lot of time flying around storms then. But sometimes planes and lightning share the same airspace, making strikes a bit more likely.

“The aircraft on approach is on a fairly low level, and the charge difference between what’s going on in the cloud and on the ground is probably a little bit greater in that zone where the aircraft is.”

That two Alaska Airlines jets were struck within a few hours of each other doesn’t seem like such a remarkable coincidence when you realize just how much lightning was happening from Sunday evening to Monday evening. 396 strikes total, mostly on the outer coast and over the Gulf, according to new detection equipment in use by the National Weather Service.

“It’s light years. I mean it’s so far ahead of what we used to have about two years ago, that we’re able to watch all this oceanic lightning that we never really had a handle on before.”

Curtis says the lightning detection system is proprietary to the manufacturer, but relies on triangulation to pinpoint lightning. He saw strikes as far inland as Glacier Bay on Monday, but no farther, since the water toward the mainland side of Southeast Alaska is colder.

But is this unusual weather? Not at all.

“I have to tell you that this is the climatological time of year that we see the most lightning. And in fact it’s the time of year when a few of us get to experience thundersnow.”

Thundersnow. Curtis says the storms that produce the most lightning also produce a very specific kind of precipitation. There’s a doppler radar on Biorka Island in Sitka Sound that “sees” rain, snow, and everything in between.

“And when I see a type of ice pellet called graupel…”

Graupel is a tiny droplet of water that is rimed in ice. Not hail. Not really snow. And graupel is behind a lot of the lightning in Southeast Alaska.

Curtis – They’re not all that big. The water molecules are attaching themselves to this and, of course, water being bipolar with a couple of nice charges on it, really sets up a charge difference between it and the ground.
KCAW – Bang! Lightning.
Curtis – Yeah, you get enough of that, and it’s being thrown up and down, that’s what really gets a charge going. And the next thing you know you need a discharge.

But of course none of this matters if you’re waiting in an airport. Sitka librarian Kari Sagel boarded the replacement aircraft sent up from Seattle to continue flight 62. Sagel says she finally got on the plane about 5 hours behind schedule, and the misadventures continued.

“And so much time went by. We had to de-ice. We had to wait for a plane to land, and we finally made it to Ketchikan. When we made it to Ketchikan, however, they were trying for a quick turnaround. We left the gate, we taxied away. We taxied for an extremely long time. We seemed to do a 180. And soon we were back at the gate. They de-planed some passengers. A little boy refused to sit and be seat-belted.”

The boy and his father were left behind in Ketchikan. I reached Sagel as she waited for a lift from cousins at the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, airport. This was the first time in 23 years she’s gone home for Christmas. A journey she won’t soon repeat.

“I will be in Sitka next year for the holidays.”

Despite all the unexpected complications, Sagel reports that Alaska Airlines handled the circumstances Monday with great style.