Kodiak Island was hammered with heavy rain and winds over Halloween weekend, during which 4.6 inches of rain were dumped on the island, and 62 mph winds buffeted the coasts. According to Joe Wegman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Anchorage, it wasn’t your run-of-the-mill storm.
“The weather occurred due to a strong low that moved up from the North Pacific into the Gulf. And it was somewhat unusual, especially for some of the other parts of the Gulf Coast because it had a really strong tropical connection with what we meteorologists like to call an atmospheric river, which brought a lot of a ton of moisture into the area and caused some really heavy rain, especially for the north along the Kenai Peninsula,” Wegman said.
Southcentral definitely felt the brunt of the storm. Wegman says the Portage Glacier area received over 21 inches of rainfall, causing severe landslides.
In Kodiak, the storm brought a torrential downpour over a two-day period, but according to Wegman, it may have brought around five inches of rain.
“It was definitely one of the stronger ones, especially for the amount of moisture and rainfall. For Kodiak, unfortunately, the reporting sensor there at the airport has been acting funny, and it’s breaking it sometimes. So the 4.6 inches of rainfall was intermittent, and it could have been even more. Unfortunately, we’ll never know,” Wegman said.
Some river gauges were brought to the “minor flood” level on Kodiak, according to the National Weather Service. Wegman says this weekend was one for the record books.
“It would have been Kodiak’s 30th wettest two day period on record, if 4.6 was the final rainfall tally. It certainly isn’t seasonal, but does happen, on occasion, seems to be at least once every few years, get rainfall amounts to this level,” Wegman said.
The all-time record for rain in 48 hours on Kodiak was set October 31 through November 1 of 1991, with over 10 inches of rain washing over the island.