Juneau

The City and Borough of Juneau issued an avalanche alert via text Monday afternoon, telling residents in the Mount Juneau slide path to be prepared.

It’s the second avalanche alert issued in the last week, as record-breaking snow blankets the community and the mountains above it.  

Ryan O’Shaughnessy, Juneau’s emergency programs manager, said the alert is not an evacuation advisory. 

“It’s reminding folks to be prepared to evacuate, and that conditions can change rapidly,” he said. 

He said that the historic 4-foot snowpack appeared to stabilize over the weekend. But on Monday the avalanche risk rose again due to a change in the weather. 

“With new snowfall today, warming temperatures and high winds in the forecast, avalanche danger is increasing,” he said.

The alert covers residents in the Behrends and White neighborhoods, as well as Thane Road. The road remains open, but drivers are reminded not to stop in the avalanche zone. 

In the event of an avalanche evacuation, O’Shaugnessy said Centennial Hall will be the emergency shelter and the American Red Cross has resources staged there now. He also said the Alaska Department of Transportation is prepared to clear evacuation routes. 

He said the avalanches that DOT triggered above Thane Road on Gastineau Ridge last week weren’t very large, and that tells him two things: the snowpack is a bit more stubborn than anticipated, and there is still a lot of snow up there.

More snow is on the way this week for Juneau and the rest of the panhandle, even as recovery from last week’s storm continues.

The Juneau School District announced Sunday night that school would be closed Monday. City and state offices are also closed, and the University of Alaska Southeast campus will operate remotely.

National Weather Service meteorologist Greg Spann says communities from Elfin Cove to Juneau can expect anywhere from 5 to 13 inches of new snow on Monday. The heaviest snow is expected mid-morning through the afternoon.

There’s a possibility for a changeover to rain or a mixture of rain and snow sometime later Monday. It’s expected to change back to snow Tuesday and continue into Wednesday. Spann said the variability of that makes it hard to predict precipitation amounts on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“One part of Juneau might get three inches or four inches of new snow out of a new snow shower,” Spann said. “Another part of Juneau might not see anything at all.”

The snowstorm that hit the region last week dumped about 4 feet of snow on the capital city in as many days. That helped break the record for Juneau’s snowiest December ever and made it the second snowiest month ever.

“We do not expect to get as much snow overall as we got with last week’s event, that event that we got up previously, around Christmas through New Year’s, that was an extraordinary event that broke a whole lot of records,” he said. “Hopefully this event will not be quite as extreme.”

Spann advised that people take their time with travel and do their best to uncover any nearby fire hydrants that may be covered by snow.

Light snow showers will continue later in the week. Spann said there’s a chance for another system to bring even more snow after that — for those who haven’t had enough yet.

This story has been updated with additional information about state, school and city closures. 

Two Juneau artists spent this snowy Friday framing and mounting 18 block prints that correlate with myths — ones they wrote themselves. 

The prints are a part of a show titled “My Mother’s Bones,” opening Friday at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.

Rachel Levy said thinking about folktales and their morals inspired the series. 

“Things you wouldn’t even consider mythology, just like certain truths we hear over and over again and all the stories that are told to us growing up,” she said. “And stories we tell each other as adults.”

She wanted to write her own — ones that reflect themes she holds dear: the gifts that our mothers give us, both the ones who birth us and Mother Earth. 

One print shows a heart with a dagger through it. 

“This is about a mom and a daughter who kind of like grow up in this garden together, and the daughter never appreciates life, is never content,” Levy said. “And so the mother decides to slowly cut out her heart and feed it to her daughter piece by piece, so that way she can enjoy life.” 

Levy said it represents her gratitude to her own mother, and the sacrifices she made raising her. 

Alex Bookless was also inspired by her own family for her prints, including the four-legged kind. She pointed to a print of a dog shooting through the darkness with the sun in its teeth. 

“Basically, it’s a story about how much I love my dog,” she said. “And how much I think that loving my dog teaches me how to love myself.” 

That story — and 17 other new folktales — can be found at the JACC Friday from 4 to 7 p.m. The show runs through January. 

Update, Sunday: 

Fred Meyer reopened Sunday.

Update, Saturday 2 p.m.:

Fred Meyer remains closed. Nugget Mall is also closed due to snow accumulation.

Original story: 

It’s a new year, but Juneau residents are still digging out from four feet of snow that fell this week.

The heavy snow collapsed the roof of at least one Juneau business, and others have closed for snow removal. 

Fred Meyer closed early on Thursday and did not reopen on Friday morning. 

“Our Juneau Fred Meyer is temporarily closed to allow for snow removal and will reopen as soon as possible,” said Tiffany Sanders, a spokesperson for Fred Meyer, on Friday morning. “Thank you for your patience and understanding.”

It’s unclear when the grocery store will reopen to the public. The Fred Meyer gas station is also closed after part of its awning collapsed. 

The roof of the Juneau Shotokan Karate dojo in the Mendenhall Valley collapsed on Wednesday morning, according to Vice President of the Board Sandy Burgess. She wrote on social media that no one was inside the building at the time.

At least nine vessels and multiple boat shelters sank at Juneau’s harbors throughout the week. The city’s docks and harbors staff are working around the clock to respond to reports and are pleading with owners to check their vessels.

Harbormaster Matt Creswell said dozens of boats have had near misses.

“It’s going to be a long process with the number of boats that are currently sunk, but staff are ready for that challenge,” he said on Friday morning. “We’ll be working in earnest, starting today, raising vessels, but expect that to be a couple week process to get everything up.”

The Alaska Department of Transportation reopened Thane Road on New Year’s Day after performing avalanche mitigation that morning. Officials say the avalanche danger remains high in all neighborhoods below Mount Juneau.

According to the National Weather Service, more than 80 inches of snow fell at Juneau International Airport last month. It made December the capital city’s second snowiest month ever recorded.

As plowing and roof clearing continue throughout the community, where to put all the snow is becoming an issue. 

“The snow removal process takes a long time because we basically have to either, with snowblowers or loaders, load all that snow into dump trucks and take it away,” City Manager Katie Koester said during a press availability on Wednesday. “We’re also having challenges at the snow storage sites, just because of the tremendous amount of snow.”

No major snow is forecast to fall in Juneau until Monday. However, temperatures are expected to drop this weekend.

This post has been updated. 

Update: The Alaska Department of Transportation reopened Thane Road on Thursday. 

The City and Borough of Juneau is warning residents about urban avalanches a bit differently this year in an effort to help residents in the downtown avalanche zone understand how they should respond to the danger. 

The city posted its new avalanche information webpage on Monday, the day before it issued an avalanche advisory for the Behrends neighborhood and Thane Road that remains in effect. 

The Alaska Department of Transportation closed Thane Road Tuesday evening and observed several small avalanches in the area overnight. The department plans to fly helicopters over the area to trigger avalanches using explosives or a blast device called a DaisyBell on Thursday starting at 11 a.m.

Juneau activated its new avalanche communications strategy as a winter storm dumped around four feet of snow on the capital city over roughly four days. 

Nicole Ferrin, a warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Juneau, said at a press briefing Wednesday that the winter storm brought new snow records with it. 

“The depth was 50 inches of snow on the ground, which is the deepest snow depth ever recorded at the Juneau Airport,” she said, adding that the previous record for accumulated snow was 41 inches in February 1949. 

Weather officials say more than 80 inches of snow has fallen at Juneau International Airport this December, making this the city’s second snowiest month ever recorded so far. The month-long record was set in February 1965 at 86.3 inches. For reference, Juneau averages around 88 inches of snow all winter. 

City officials say they’ve changed messaging around avalanche danger to help people understand what to do. 

The biggest change is that the city is no longer expressing avalanche danger on a scale from one — low — to five — extreme. Now, it’s using a “ready, set, go” system instead. 

Ryan O’Shaughnessy is the emergency programs manager for the City and Borough of Juneau. He says the five-point scale was geared towards backcountry recreation like skiing and snowmobiling, and didn’t really tell residents living in an avalanche path how they should respond. 

“There is not a recognized urban avalanche hazard scale that’s widely used and accepted by avalanche forecasters, and that’s largely because there are not many places in the United States that have the urban avalanche hazard that Juneau has,” he said.

The five-point scale included both the likelihood and size of an avalanche. Now, O’Shaugnessy says the focus is on the potential downhill impact. 

“When we start seeing conditions developing that are trending towards a threat to life, safety or public infrastructure, that’s where we’re at an ‘elevated risk.’”

He says residents in hazard zones should always be ‘ready’ during a winter storm, meaning they should stay up-to-date with weather conditions. When the city issues an advisory saying there’s an elevated avalanche risk, they should get ‘set’ by packing a bag and preparing to stay with friends or family outside of the avalanche zone. An evacuation notice means ‘go’ immediately. 

He says it’s too dangerous to trigger avalanches above the Behrends neighborhood, so leaving in the event of an evacuation notice is the best strategy. 

The city is sending emergency alerts via cell phone notifications that residents can opt into. O’Shaughnessy urges people to sign up and says roughly 10% of Juneau’s population is on the list. 

“That’s absolutely the best way to stay up to date on hazard awareness and any protective actions that may be required,” he said. 

O’Shaughnessy said the city won’t rule out going door-to-door to warn residents, as it has in the past, but text alerts reach people faster. 

The other change is that city staff are no longer evaluating snowpack in the field to issue an independent avalanche forecast. Instead, O’Shaughnessy said the city is relying on forecasts prepared by professionals at the Alaska Department of Transportation and the Coastal Alaska Avalanche Center.

The National Weather Service’s winter storm warning ended today at noon and snowfall is expected to taper off Thursday, but the avalanche danger remains.

After Juneau residents helped raise more than $1 million this fall, a local boy with a rare genetic disease will be able to receive a potentially life-changing gene therapy in the new year.

For the past two years, 4-year-old Cade Jobsisʼs mother Emma Jobsis has been raising money to allow scientists to restart clinical trials that previously showed promising results treating AP4 Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia, or SPG50. 

Cade was born with the rare disease, which would gradually take away his cognitive and motor function without treatment. 

“We got his diagnosis in 2023,” Jobsis said. “And that’s when we found this, this group that was working on this gene therapy, but there wasn’t any funding.”

Jobsis said she and three other families who have kids with the disease started asking their communities for help. She said the Juneau community has been supportive from the get go — especially the kids.

“They would knock on my door with a jar of coins, telling me they had collected them for him. And it was so heartwarming,” Jobsis said. “But it wasn’t the jar of coins that did it. It was the fact that so many kids and families were talking about him and telling people about him.”

The four families raised $3 million to pay for the production of the drugs. Then, in September, a grant that would have covered the treatment administration fell through. 

The families needed another $1.15 million.

Jobsis said she was a wreck, but she didnʼt lose hope. She used TikTok, Facebook and Instagram to spread the word. 

“I just got on my social media and just started talking. And boy oh, boy, did my community hear me,” she said.

Jobsis said so many businesses in Juneau stepped up to help raise the money she couldnʼt keep track of them all. In total, the Juneau community contributed more than $400,000 in just two months. 

They were still less than halfway to their goal. 

“And a local family contacted me,” Jobsis said. “And she said, ‘I have been watching your social media. I have seen what you’re trying to do, and I have heard you say on countless occasions that you just need to reach the right person, and we want to be that right person for you.ʼ”

That $600,000 donation brought them across the finish line, providing enough funding to treat all four kids.

One of them, a young girl named Naomi, got her first dose of the drug on Dec. 9. Now, the other three children are waiting to be scheduled. Jobsis said they’ll find out when Cade gets his treatment in the coming weeks.

“I cannot thank this community enough,” she said. “I mean, as the weather is terrible here, but we live here for the people, the community is unmatched.”