The National Weather Service expects two major atmospheric rivers to hit Southeast Alaska over the weekend into Wednesday. Andy Park, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Juneau, said Wrangell will have dryer conditions as compared to other southern communities.
He said the first atmospheric river is weak, and is currently moving over us right now. The rain will escalate tonight. Park said it resembles a normal, wet fall storm. It looks like precipitation will break on Sunday but then the second atmospheric river will approach Sunday night into Monday.
“That’s the concerning thing of where we have this event for us this weekend,” Park said. “We get wet conditions. We have another wet storm with some wind on top of that.”
Park said we should expect two to three inches of rain over the weekend in the central panhandle at sea level. Higher terrain is likely to see more.
As for the second atmospheric river, he says the rainfall amounts for Monday and Tuesday are concerning at four to five inches during that interval. Park said the three-day totals resemble two or five year events, meaning that while it’s not a regular occurence, it’s a little less than outside the seasonal norm for this location.
“The main theme here is fall is here with a vengeance,” he said. “We’re going to see pretty wet conditions over the next several days.”
Park said that he’s been in contact with the River Forecast Center and the Stikine River will definitely rise. He does not anticipate significant flooding.
He expects high winds, with 20-knot winds in Wrangell and 35-knot winds in Petersburg Friday night. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if wind gusts in the mountains reach 40 knots. He said for landslides to occur, Wrangell will have to have very wet conditions and strong winds, like 40-knots in the mountains. The National Weather Service is unable to predict when landslides will occur.
“We don’t want to cry wolf too many times,” Park said. “We want to really say, ‘Okay, we’re confident that we are seeing the conditions that major landslides are possible.’ And so that’s when we start messaging that. And for this event, we were missing a few of those essential ingredients.”
He said landslides are associated with reports from people seeing brown water shooting from mountains. That’s one major sign to get out of the way and relocate to another area. He also said to contact the National Weather Service if those conditions are sighted.
The post Second atmospheric river expected to follow current one in Southeast Alaska appeared first on KSTK.
