Communities on the outer coast can brace themselves for a blustery Thanksgiving, with heavy rainfall and winds reaching as high as 60 miles per hour in some communities on Wednesday and Thursday.
Pete Boyd is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Juneau. He says storms of this magnitude aren’t that frequent, but also aren’t unheard of this time of year in Southeast.
“We’re going to be expecting wind gusts, especially for Sitka, getting upwards of 40 to 50 miles per hour,” says Boyd. “At this point, we think most of the strongest winds for overland are going to be a little bit further south– Hydaburg, Ketchikan area, but it’s not out of the question to get some gusts up to 60 for the Sitka area, and then for rainfall…as it starts moving in, we could be seeing about two to three inches of precipitation.”
Boyd says two systems are at play in this storm. The first system will start to calm down on Wednesday evening, and right now it’s a little too soon to be sure where the second system will hit heaviest on Thursday into Friday morning.
“This is a very complex system that’s coming through, and unfortunately, a lot of uncertainty,” says Boyd. Two systems are at play in this storm. The first system will start to calm down on Wednesday evening, and right now it’s a little too soon to be sure where the second system will hit heaviest on Thursday into Friday morning. Either way, the high winds will likely affect holiday travel plans.
“Any travel on Wednesday and Thursday is going to be difficult,” says Boyd. “Aviation is going to be difficult because there’s gonna be a lot of low-level wind shear. So a lot of planes taking off and landing are going to be getting a rough ride, low ceilings, low visibilities.”
“Anybody who’s planning on being on a boat, especially for the outside water, really needs to keep checking the forecast and what their boat and what their captain’s capabilities are,” Boyd adds. “Because this is going to be a pretty significant system moving through, so we want everyone to stay safe as possible.”
Boyd says the best way to keep up to date with the changing forecast is by visiting weather.gov/juneau and tuning in to NOAA Weather Radio.
