Juneau, Alaska, Buried In December Snow, Now Faces Rain, Flooding, Avalanches

A bus makes its way through a flooded street in 
Juneau, Alaska. After unprecedented snows, it's
been raining in Juneau, causing flooding, 
avalanches and other trouble in the 
weather-beleaguered city

In December, Juneau, Alaska was buried under more than 80 inches of snow, capsizing boats in the harbor, caving in roofs and blocking streets. 

Now, after some more snow, it's raining up there in Juneau. Now we have an even bigger mess.

Juneau sometimes gets heavy snow and downpours of rain during the winter as storms and atmospheric rivers come in off the Pacific Ocean. 

But the extremes of the past few weeks is totally off the charts compared to what Juneau has experience in the past 

"These are unprecedented times," said Aaron Jacobs, the senior hydrologist at the National Weather Service office in Juneau.  "The amount of snowpack that we are seeing on the ground at the airport, and then this massive warm-up we're seeing, really hasn't been seen in the climate records."

After four additional inches of snow fell on Juneau Friday, the precipitation switched over to rain. The city received 1.58 inches of precipitation that day. Areas around Juneau receive up to eight inches of snow and two inches of rain.  

On Friday and over this weekend, the rain/snow line crept up the steep slopes of the mountains. The higher up the slopes the rain gets, the greater the avalanche risk.

As KTOO reported:

"John Bressette, the city's new avalanche advisor, said multiple avalanches happened on Mount Juneau on known slide paths including White Pass, Chop Gully near Flume Train and above Behrends Avenue. He said he doesn't know exactly how many occurred, but that it's somewhere in the double-digits." 

People in avalanche prone areas in and near Juneau were urged to be ready to leave at the drop of a hat due to the avalanche worries. 

An emergency warming shelter was moved from a converted warehouse to an elementary school Friday due to the avalanche risk. By Sunday, emergency managers deemed that the avalanche risk had diminished, so they moved the shelter back to the warehouse.  There could be avalanches in that areas, but they wouldn't be strong enough to reach the shelter. 

Some avalanches did crash down the steep slopes above Juneau, but none hit populated areas. 

The shelters are open in large part because the weight of the snow, plus the rain water soaking into that snow, is threatening the stability of many roofs in and around Juneau. 

About sixty people were on the roof of the Bartlett Regional Hospital Saturday trying to remove snow because roof loads were nearing capacity, reports KTOO.

The snow-clogged storm drains and ditches in Juneau were no match for the rain and the snow melt. Streets flooded, and water began to seep into basements across the city. 

Another rain storm was set to hit Juneau and the rest of southeast Alaska last night and this morning. A more powerful storm set to hit Tuesday night has prompted a flood watch for southeast Alaska, especially south of Juneau. To add insult to injury, a  high wind watch is also up for Tuesday night and Wednesday for pretty much the entire Alaska Panhandle. 

Video: An avalanche is seen crashing down a steep slope in Juneau on Friday. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

 

Extreme Cold, Snow Hits Alaska, Northwest Canada

While we in Vermont endured the second coldest December in a quarter century, things were even worse - much worse - in Alaska and large swaths of northern Canada. 

Lovely weather for swimsuits in 
Fairbanks, Alaska.  There's a "40 below"
club in Fairbanks in which people pose
in swimsuits near this sign when it gets
to 40 below or colder. 

Fairbanks, Alaska endured its coldest December since 1980. Winters in Fairbanks and the rest of interior Alaska are absolutely brutal to begin with. But last month was ridiculous, at least by modern day, climate changed standards.

The average temperature for December in Fairbank was minus 22.8 degrees, which is a whipping 18.5 degrees colder than their already miserably frigid normal. It got as cold as 48 below on December 27 and 28  the coldest it's been in Fairbanks since 2012. 

Fairbanks might set a record for most consecutive days in which the low temperature was 15 below or colder. The current record is 38 days.  As of January 2, they were up to 29 days. 

The annual New Year's Eve fireworks show in Fairbanks was canceled due to the extreme chill. As the clock struck midnight in Fairbanks last night, the temperature was a thoroughly unpleasant 44 below. Even if they had launched the fireworks, it would have been hard to see them. Visibility was a half mile in freezing fog. 

By noon local time on January 1, it was still 44 below in Fairbanks.

As Rick Thoman noted on Substack, the remarkable part of the cold wave in northwest North America is the duration, even more than the low temperatures   He noted that through the first 26 days of December, parts of the Yukon were running an incredible 36 degrees (F) below normal. 

The intense cold in interior Alaska also covers northwestern Alaska. In Yukon, Canada, the temperature got as low as 68 below, the coldest it's been in Canada in 50 years. 

Earlier in December, Yukon Energy said the territory's power grid has been under significant strain as people try to stay warm. Demand reached 90 percent of availability supply. 

A break in the frigid conditions in at least parts of northwestern Canada seems to be finally looming. Whitehorse, Yukon, could finally see a day with no subzero temperatures toward Friday. Readings could actually climb into the low 20s above zero in about a week. 

Fairbanks, Alaska is expected a break of sorts, too. It'll get worse before it gets better with lows in the 50s below in Fairbanks and through much of interior Alaska. The coldest spots could hit 60 below.

Believe it or not, this isn't as cold as it can possibly get in Fairbanks. The most intense cold wave on record there was on January 13-15, 1934, when the daily low temperatures were minus 65, minus 66 and minus 64. The coldest of those three days remains the chilliest on record in Fairbanks. 

The current interior Alaska icebox regime is destined to finally ease in a few days. 

Instead of temperatures in the 40s below, in about a weeks time, that city is expected balmy readings in the single numbers and teens below zero. Which is more or less normal for them for this time of year. 

 JUNEAU SNOW

Four feet of snow fell in Juneau, 
Alaska in the final four days of the month,
The weight of the snow sank boats in
Juneau Harbor. More than 80 inches
of snow fell there in December. 

Much further south in Alaska, Juneau had 82 inches of snow in December,  Normal snowfall for December in Juneau is 18 inches. 

More than half of the month's total - 49 inches - fell in the final five days of December.  The snow is so heavy that it has sunk numerous boats in Juneau's harbor and threatens to collapse roofs on houses and other buildings.

At least eight boats had sunk in the harbor as of midday Wednesday, the Juneau Independent reported. Dozens of other boats were saved when harbor crew and boat owners got to the harbor on time to clean snow off the vessels

December was also frigid by Juneau standards. The average temperature for the month was 17.9 degrees, more than 12 degrees colder than average, 

The Juneau snow won't disappear anytime soon. The National Weather Service calls for temperatures in the teens through Sunday in Juneau, then more snow. 

In fact snow is expected in the region every day in the  of upcoming week It could mix with or change to rain late in the week around Juneau, which I imagine will turn things even messier.  

Juneau, Alaska, Hit With Another "Glacial Outburst" Flood, But This Time They Fought Back

Barriers this year kept the worst of what has become
the annual glacial outburst flood this week
in Juneau, Alaska. You can see how badly
the houses in this photo would have been
flooded without the barriers. 

 Yearly summer events are often fun.

'The one in Juneau, Alaska is not.  

Once again, as has happened every August lately, parts of Alaska's capitol city are being hit by what is know as a glacial outburst flood. 

Such a flood happens when parts of a glacier melt, and water backs up behind rocks and/or ice. Finally the water breaks through, causing an often destructive flash flood. 

In Juneau, water from the melting glacier fills a hemmed in basin until the pressure grows strong enough to release a torrent of water from the Mendenhall Glacier and down the Mendenhall River into Juneau. 

Per the Washington Post: 

"By Wednesday morning, the floodwaters racing gown from what's called Suicide Basin has risen to record levels, faster than scientists had predicted the day before. 

Juneau officials warned residents to evacuate parts of the city that have been prone to repeated flooding."

It appears the flooding peaked Wednesday morning.    About 1,000 people had evacuated ahead of the flood. 

The Mendenhall River was already at minor flood stage because of heavy rains Sunday and early Monday. Since the river started at an elevated level, the gush of water from the glacier pushed the river Wednesday morning to 16.65 feet, which surpassed the record high level of 16 feet set during last August's glacial outburst.  

Since this has become a destructive, frustrating annual event, Juneau is trying to minimize the damage. 

This year, the city worked with the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers to build a massive wall of Hesco barriers along the river to prevent the destruction seen in the last two years, WaPo reports. 

Hesco barriers are durable cloth bags filled with dirt and sand and reinforce with a metal frame. They were often used by the military in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to fortify bases.  But they can be used as giant sandbags, too.

Early reports suggest the Hesco barriers mostly held, preventing much of the feared damage to homes near the river. Roads and streets were inundated, and some homes might have taken on a little water, but the damage appears to be much less than in the previous two years. 

The Hesco wall is expensive, and included big bills assessed to residents who live in flood zones.  There needs to be a more permanent solution, but the future of these floods is unpredictable. 

 The Juneau glacial outburst floods started in 2011 and have worsened in recent years. Climate change is helping to melt more glacial ice than in years past, so more water is now usually available to cause these August floods.

In August, 2023, the outburst flood destroyed several homes.  That event included dramatic video of a house collapsing into the river.  Last year, at least 300 homes were damaged by the flooding. 

It's possible that the nature of future summer glacial floods could change as more of the glacier melts, or the thawing gets even more intense in future years. Alaska has warmed twice as fast as any other state over the past few decades, and there's no reason why that trend won't continue, as areas closer to the Arctic are warming faster than places closer to the Equator. 

The Mendenhall glacial flooding could in upcoming years find another outlet, or burst out another way instead of blasting down the Mendenhall River in one big swoosh.  

Juneau - and many other parts of the world prone to glacial outburst floods in the age of climate change - need to stay on their toes. 

Juneau, Alaska Keeps Getting Flooded By Melting Glacier

A neighborhood in Juneau, Alaska inundated last week
by what is known as a "glacial outburst" flood.

 Last Tuesday, a melting glacier unleashed a torrent of water into neighborhoods in Juneau, Alaska, something that is becoming a summertime scourge in the state's capitol city. 

The water flooded about 100 homes and forced residents to flee through the frigid ice water to safety. 

If all this sounds familiar, it's because practically the same thing happened almost exactly a year later. You might remember the viral footage of a building in Juneau falling into the Mendenhall River after another flood, a type known as a glacial outburst. 

The term "glacial outburst" almost sounds like an oxymoron. Glacial evokes slowness, and outburst seems like it's something sudden. 

But follow me, here. 

The Mendenhall Glacier sits in the high elevations above Juneau. Especially in the past decade or so, a basin behind the glacier fills up with rainwater and melt from the glacier. The glacier acts like a dam to hold this lake back.

Until it doesn't

The pent up suddenly finds a way through, and the result is a flash flood in Juneau. That's what happened last Tuesday. 

Last year's version seemed more dramatic, but it only damaged or destroyed buildings right along the Mendenhall River's edge. This time, more water suddenly blasted down the hillsides than last year. That caused more widespread flooding and damaged houses further away from the river than in the 2023 event, the Washington Post reports. 

WaPo continues:

"Glacial outburst floods have poured out of Suicide Basin more than 30 times since 2011. It is challenging to predict exactly how large they will be, since conditions change each year. The jumble of icebergs in the basin keep melting - adding more liquid to the pool - and the glacier that acts as a dam keeps thinning and retreating as the atmosphere warms, so scientists don't know exactly when the pent-up water might release." 

Figuring out how much water will come out of the glacier during an outburst is hard to forecast, too. 

Scientists who are studying the glacier, and the basin - called Suicide Basin - where the water collects in the summer say year to year changes in the basin and the shape of the glacier make it difficult to determine how much water is dammed behind the glacier.

This year, the water in the basin wasn't has high as last year. But the basin is getting wider as the main glacier melts and gets thinner. The result was a greater volume of water in the basin this year that last.

This whole glacial outburst mess in Juneau - and elsewhere in the world - is of course tied to climate change. Mountain glaciers are melting all over the world, setting up similar temporary lakes behind glaciers in places like the Alps and the Himalayas. 

Those areas, too, are prone to glacial outbursts. 

 

Not Much Snow In Vermont, So Go To Buried Alaska?

Photo from a Facebook post by The Alaska Life gives a 
taste of what intersections in Anchorage, Alaska 
currently look like after record snowstorms, 

 We all know Alaska is for the most part bitterly cold in the winter. 

We'd expect snow to accompany that Arctic air, but this winter, populated parts of the state are absolutely buried in it.  

As of Tuesday, Anchorage, Alaska has so far had 104.6 inches of snow this season. That's easily the earliest in the season they've ever cracked the 100 inch snow mark.

 If Anchorage does not get so much as another flake of snow this winter (ha!) they've still had two feet more snow than they normally do in an entire season.

The city's last big installment of snow was the 16.6 inches that fell this past weekend. Since there's few places to put the snow, it's taking a long time to clean up the mess.  As of Tuesday, there was 37 inches of snow on the ground in Anchorage. 

It doesn't help that a frigid cold snap - fairly intense even by Anchorage standards has moved in.  High temperatures will be below zero until at least Saturday and low temperatures will flirt with 20 below. (Normal lows this time of year in Anchorage are in the low teens with normal highs in the low 20s)

There's also so much snow that roofs around Anchorage are beginning to collapse.  A warehouse roof collapsed this week near Anchorage. There were people inside, but they all managed to escape uninjured. 

Anchorage is also an earthquake-prone city, so I hope they don't have any temblors with all that snow on the roofs to make things even more unstable when the shaking starts.

Last year, 107.9 inches of snow fell in Anchorage, so this makes it the first time since at least the 1950s they've had back to back winters each with over 100 inches of snow. There were roof collapsed last year, too, one of which killed a person. Officials in Anchorage are worried the same thing could happen again in the coming days and weeks.

More snow is in the Anchorage forecast from Saturday night into Tuesday night. 

Juneau is much more temperate than the rest of the state.  Snow tends to come and go there, but this month has been ridiculous.  Back to back snowstorms in mid-January amounted to 64.7 inches in less than two weeks. Snow cover on the ground peaked at 36 inches.

The snow was so heavy that it sank some boats in Juneau harbor 

Then it turned warm, with 3.5 inches of rain within six days. The snow cover melted to zero with six days. The snowmelt and rain obviously created  some flooding around Juneau.  

The snow in parts of Alaska is no doubt extreme, but National Weather Service climate researcher Brian Brettschneider told Alaska Public Radio that this winter's cold is not that odd for Alaska.

Up in Fairbanks, it has been often in the 40s below zero for the past week. But it used to go to 50 below or colder in Fairbanks every year. Now it's maybe once every decade. 

That's all thanks to climate change. 

There's even some speculation and research suggesting the snowier winters swaths of Alaska are seeing in recent years has to do with climate change. The air near Alaska is now tending to be warmer than it used to be. Warmer air can hold more moisture, so precipitation has been increasing in Alaska. Four of the top 10 wettest years in Anchorage have happened since 2004.  

"Warmer" in Alaska can still mean temperatures well below freezing, so of course much of the extra precipitation can be snow.  

Alaska Glacial Flood Might Just Be A Foretaste Of Something Much Worse

A house tumbles into the Mendenhall River in Juneau,
Alaska last month after water from a melting glacier
burst through ice and roared down the valley. So
called glacial outburst floods are becoming more
common worldwide as glaciers melt under climate change. 

 You might have seen on the news last month a flood in Juneau, Alaska which included video of a house, having been undermined by raging water, toppled into the flooded river.  

This wasn't your average heavy rain flood. This was, at least in part, glaciers melting under pressure from climate change. 

In the Alaska incident, a melting glacier filled a valley with water, A high spot or chunks of glacier ice blocks the water, creating a lake. That natural dam can't hold, so eventually the water just pours out

According to Alaska Public Media:

"The basin drains like this every year. The glacier, which blocks its mouth, acts as a dam. Throughout the spring and summer, the basin fills with rain and meltwater until the water builds enough pressure to crack through the ice. Then it works its way through those cracks and out under the glacier, triggering the start of a glacial outburst flood.

Most years, the flooding has been minor. But this year, it tore through the Mendenhall Valley with more force than ever before gnawing through the riverbank and undermining homes that once seemed safe. Two homes were swept away completely, and dozens of people have been displaced."

For the longest time, a flood like what hit this river in Juneau couldn't have happened. This basin, or valley, was pretty much entirely filled by the glacier. With all that ice in the way, water couldn't collect there.

Over the years, the glacier receded under the unrelenting impact of our changing climate. Where the glacier once was, there is now a huge bowl shaped depression. In the summer, it rains, snow melts, and parts of the glacier melt further. This bowl fills up with water, basically turning into a lake. 

The glacial outburst floods started in 2011, but until this year, they haven't caused much damage. 

With more of the glacier melting, there's more and more room for the basin to fill up with a lot more water. This year, a lot of water collected before breaking through the glacier ice.

The result downstream was an unmitigated disaster.  It was by far the worst glacial outburst flood in Juneau's history.  The Mendenhall River flowed at six times its normal rate. The homes and buildings destroyed in the flood, some of which fell into the river, were originally 50 feet away from the river bank. 

"'Decades worth of erosion happened in one weekend,' Rick Thomas, Alaska Climate Specialist at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy told Climate.gov. 'The buildings that fell into the river and those that are uninhabitable now, were not right next to the river on Friday afternoon."

Alaska Public Media again:

"(University of Alaska Southeast hydrologist Erin  ) Hood says the threat posed by glacial outbursts floods will hang over Juneau until the Mendenhall Glacier melts down to the point it can no longer dam the sin. That will likely take decades - and Hood would be surprised if Juneau doesn't see even worse floods before it happens."

Glacial outburst floods are by no means unique to Juneau, or Alaska for that matter. According to the Washington Post: 

"Some 15 million people worldwide live under the threat of sudden flooding from glaciers, according to a study published this year in the journal Nature Communications. As the climate warms, glaciers everywhere are retreating and meltwater lakes have grown in size and number, intensifying this threat." 

There have always been glacial outburst floods, but they are increasing as climate change accelerates the melt.  Runoff from the melting glaciers forms lakes behind ice, rocks or soil, just as it did in Juneau last month. Then the barrier breaks and sometimes tremendous flash floods result.

Some of the worst new glacial outburst floods have been in places like Pakistan, Nepal and China, parts of which are downstream from Himalayan glaciers. Parts of Peru, near the Andes, are also at risk.  

The number of glacial lakes and total area covered by those lakes have increased by 50 percent since 1990. Not all these lakes will produce dangerous outburst floods, but some inevitably will. 

I guess we add this to the list of a zillion hazards associated with climate change. 

One glimmer of good news: A cat named Leo was thought to be in a house that collapsed into the river in Juneau during the flood. However, the cat must have run out of the house when it heard it creaking before the collapse. Leo was just found safe, 26 days after the disaster. 

 Here news video of that house collapsing into the river. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below click on that: