Winter has arrived in Southeast Alaska, bringing freezing temperatures and enough snow to break daily records for some communities.
Jeff Garmon is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Juneau.
“I don’t think anybody escapes having to, you know, just make sure that we’re ready for arctic temperatures,” Garmon said. “Typically what’s over in British Columbia, we’re getting. It didn’t stop at the mountains. It decided to come for a visit in Alaska.”
Last weekend, Juneau broke its daily record for Dec. 6 with 9.6 inches of snow, the most snow recorded for that date, according to decades of data maintained by the National Weather Service.
Though there’s no consistent record of snowfall data for Wrangell, the community got over 18 inches of snow earlier this week.
And on Mitkof Island, over 15 inches of snow fell in Petersburg. The town got 7.8 inches on Monday alone, breaking the daily record for Dec. 8 by 3.8 inches. Another 7.5 inches of snow fell on Tuesday, which was a couple inches shy of that date’s daily record — a whopping 9.9 inches that fell during a historic storm in 1946.
Garmon said the average amount of snowfall for a single day is around half an inch.
“It was a significant snowfall,” said Garmon.
Looking ahead, he said freezing temperatures are forecasted throughout the region, and more snow could fall this weekend and early next week.
