A second winter storm since Thursday’s massive snow dump has again paralyzed Anchorage and much of Southcentral Alaska Monday, just a week after the city’s first major snowfall this season.
Anchorage School District and Mat-Su Borough schools have declared remote learning days Monday, with after-school activities in Anchorage canceled as well. The University of Alaska Anchorage is also closed.
State offices in Anchorage and the Mat-Su, as well as Municipality of Anchorage offices, are closed as well. Anchorage’s People Mover bus service has been suspended for the day, with AnchorRIDES making only essential trips. As of 9:30 a.m., police had reports of 20 stranded vehicles Monday plus four vehicle accidents, one of them with injuries.
According to the National Weather Service, Anchorage was under a winter storm warning until noon Monday, with 6 to 9 inches of snow expected in most areas. The heaviest snowfall is forecasted for the Anchorage and Eagle River Hillsides, which could receive up to a foot of snow.
NWS meteorologist Brandon Lawson said Monday morning that the storm front hitting Anchorage Monday had tracked across the western Bering Sea, affecting weather across Western Alaska. On Monday morning the weather service’s Anchorage office recorded 7.6 inches of snow overnight — leaving the city on track to break a record set in 1994.
“That puts our November snow up to 36.8 inches for this November for Anchorage,” Lawson said. “And I know that the all-time November snow record on record since 1953 is 38.8 inches, so we’re only a couple inches away.”
By Monday afternoon, the snowfall tally had risen to 8.9 inches of snow, an additional 1.3 inches of snowfall.
Lawson said the storm system was moving east out of the area Monday afternoon. Another storm system was set to move into the area Wednesday morning.
“It looks like the bulk of the snow with this current system is coming to an end, for at least the Anchorage Bowl up into the valley,” Lawson said.
Western parts of Prince William Sound and the eastern Kenai Peninsula were under a blizzard warning until 4 p.m. Monday, with the forecast calling for 4 to 6 inches of snow as well as wind gusts up to 50 mph.
By 3 p.m. Monday, Chugach Electric was dealing with sporadic outages affecting a few hundred people. The Matanuska Electric Association reported about 4,000 members without power.
The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities said in a Facebook post that road graders were sweeping the Glenn and Seward highways near Anchorage to break up ice formed from traffic ruts. On Sunday night, graders swept Anchorage’s A and C streets between 15th Avenue and O’Malley Road.
The City of Wasilla has asked residents to conserve water, due to low well pressure.
Chris Klint is a web producer and breaking news reporter at Alaska Public Media. Reach him at cklint@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Chris here.
