As Anchorage’s summer wave of events and festivals begins, residents have seen a rainy start to the season with cool conditions sweeping through much of the state and snow sticking to area peaks.
Anchorage’s forecast calls for chances of rain through Monday. Local firefighters say the city’s summer wildfire outlook has been improved by the wet weather. And the Anchorage Daily News reported that a late-season avalanche Saturday, in the Byron Glacier Valley near Portage Lake, prompted a “frontcountry rescue” of two people with minor injuries.
National Weather Service meteorologist Michael Kutz said Thursday that Southcentral Alaska’s rainy belt is being driven by low-pressure systems over northern areas of the state and the Gulf of Alaska, with a high-pressure area passing through the Interior between them. The result, he said, has been “pumping in all kinds of extra moisture” to Southcentral.
“It's kind of just basically funneling right over the top of us,” Kutz said. “That's the two things that are bringing us the cooler air – and then throw in the rain and we're stuck with cool, wet weather.”
Kutz said Southeast Alaska has also been “in the crosshairs” of the wet weather, with some communities there seeing record-breaking rain in May.
“Every once in a while we get a wave that knocks on our door and brings us some more rain and stuff like that,” he said. “But you know, Southeast Alaska has been catching it right in the teeth.”
Anchorage nearly matched a record of its own Wednesday, according to Kutz, as its high temperature for the day was just a fraction of a degree over 51 – the second-coolest for the date on record. The coolest high for June 4, a flat 51 degrees, was set in 1972.
Some social media posts have been wryly billing snow at higher altitudes as “termination dust,” but Kutz said that isn’t technically accurate because the Weather Service’s snow season resets at mid-year.
“We would normally have warm enough weather that would not support snow, so we just go ahead and terminate it at the end of June,” he said. “Then it starts up again, and it goes from July 1st to June 30th next year.”
The snow-capped horizon should be on the way out, he said, with the local freezing level – the altitude above which rain falls as snow, due to lower temperatures – descending from 5,000 feet to 3,200 feet over the past several days.
Kutz said the cool weather is likely to remain in Anchorage through the weekend.
“We're gonna see just a kind of cool, drizzly, rainy, nice sleeping weather,” Kutz said. “But who wants to sleep in daylight when there's a lot of stuff to see and do?”
Asked if residents will be able to see the approaching summer solstice on June 20, Kutz said next week offers a reprieve from the rain, as a good chance of clear weather reaching the area starts Tuesday.
