Outdoors

Its harvest time and the Juneau community garden celebrated on Sunday with the 19th annual Harvest Fair.

Master Gardener Ed Buyarski has some tips for drainage and a preview of some upcoming gardening events.

Recent heavy rains likely mean Juneau will have plenty of water to produce hydroelectric power this winter.

“Our fuel is rain and snow, so even though we all like sunshine and nice weather, we need the rain,” says Alaska Electric Light and Power generation engineer Scott Willis.

He watches water levels in the lakes that produce electricity for Snettisham, Lake Dorothy and Salmon Creek hydro projects. He says it’s been a dry two years.

“Prior to this weekend, our lakes were lower this year than last year at this time. And last year we didn’t fill any of our lakes,” Willis says. “But just this three-day storm put us ahead of last year.”

The Snettisham area got nine inches of rain between Friday and Monday. Crater and Long lakes provide the energy for the turbines. Crater Lake rose 21 feet and Long Lake rose 15 feet over the weekend. Prior to the rain storm, Long Lake had been rising only six to eight inches a day.

“Snettisham gets about three times more precipitation than we do in town. So if we get an inch and a half in town that’s four or five inches out at Snettisham,” Willis says.

Snettisham is the workhorse of A-E-L & P’s generation system, and provides most of Juneau’s electricity. The rest comes from Lake Dorothy and Salmon Creek hydro projects. Lake Dorothy grew seven feet, and Salmon Creek rose 10 feet over the weekend.

While none of the lakes have filled, Willis says he expects there’ll be plenty of water to run Juneau’s hydro this fall and winter, especially since September and October are usually wet months. When lake levels are low, the company has to supplement hydro with expensive diesel fuel.

A graph of lake levels is at www.aelp.com.

Mendenhall Lake and Mendenhall River are now at minor flood stage.

The National Weather Service has issued a flood advisory for both areas.

Mendenhall Lake was nearly at 9.7 feet last hour. The river was over 11.8 feet.

Hydrometeorological technician Geri Swanson says they expect water levels to continue rising a bit.

“Right now with the continued rainfall, we’re looking for the crest hopefully within the next six to twelve hours,” said Swanson. “And then (we’ll be) seeing a gradual decrease though the night and tomorrow.”

Swanson says water has come up to the lower part of the Mendenhall Lake Campground and a yard of a house on View Drive. Part of the road to Skater’s Cabin is closed.

But the Swanson doesn’t expect water levels to get as high as this summer’s glacial outburst. Rainfall has already started tapering off.

Official observations at the Juneau Airport recorded 2.17 inches for the weekend’s rainfall. Swanson says it’s almost 2.75 inches including today’s rainfall.

Other areas in Juneau may have more or less. For instance, a rain gauge in the downtown Juneau area recorded a total of 4.18 inches from Friday until Monday morning.

The Taku River crested at just over 39 feet over the weekend, four feet short of flood stage.

Montana Creek also briefly flooded Saturday, but water levels have already trended down. Swanson says that stream is more susceptible to sudden heavy downpours instead of steady constant rainfall.

A humpback whale calf has been disentangled from fishing gear near Juneau.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration spokeswoman Julie Speegle says the calf and its mother were spotted Wednesday morning by a charter fishing boat near Halibut Cove on Shelter Island. The whales appeared to be heading up Lynn Canal at about 5 knots. Other whale-watching boats monitored the pair until a NOAA team could arrive on-scene.

“The calf was trailing a bouy and it was entangled in the line, said Speegle. “Our whale disentanglement team did spend several hours observing the lines and how they were wrapped around the calf to figure out exactly which lines to sever in order to free the calf.”

The five-member, specially-trained disentanglement team also attached a transmitter to track the calf in case it raced away before they could return in a separate boat to free it.

“Mama was nearby and she was very protective of her calf throughout this whole operation,” said Speegle. “At times, she tried to position herself between the rescuers and the calf to protect her calf.”

Speegle said the calf was freed from the fishing lines Wednesday evening just west of Berners Bay.

Master Gardener Ed Buyarski has some tips for collecting and drying seeds.