It’s a good kind of freak.
October is normally Juneau’s wettest month of the year, a cloudy, soggy affair that drives capital city residents indoors. This year is different: According to the National Weather Service office here, no rain has fallen on Juneau since Sept. 29.
It’s the driest start to October and the most consecutive days without rain in October since the start of modern record-keeping at the airport in 1936.
“October is our wettest month of the year. That’s why, as you’re liking to say, it’s freakish,” said Kimberly Vaughan, observation program leader with the Weather Service in Juneau. “That’s definitely the topic around here and the calls we get.”
In a normal October, 2.75 inches of rain would have been recorded at Juneau International Airport — the city’s official measuring point — by Monday morning. Instead, there’s only been a trace of precipitation — and that likely caused by dew and frost.
Instead of overcast skies, Juneau has been enjoying an unbroken string of blue-sky days with only occasional tufts of white clouds.
The unusual October extends across Southeast Alaska. On Annette Island, near Ketchikan, only 0.24 inches of rain had fallen by Monday morning. A normal October has seen 3.6 inches of rain by that point.
In Yakutat, 7.24 inches of rain normally falls in the first nine days of October. This year, not even a trace of rain has been seen.
“We have a weak ridge over the panhandle, and that’s kind of pushing all of the clouds out of the area for the most part,” Vaughan explained.
As the clouds go, so goes the rain.
“The jet (stream) is actually positioned to where it’s going down in more of the Washington state area instead of bringing in the weather to us,” she said. “Until that ridge is able to move eastward or lose its amplitude, we’re not going to get much of the weather.”
With no insulating layer of clouds, temperatures are spiking during the day and sinking below freezing each night.
“We’re above normal on high temperatures, below normal on low,” Vaughan said.
The last time Juneau had an October dry stretch like this was 2012, when no rain was recorded between Oct. 19 and Oct. 30. That streak will be tied today and broken tomorrow.
No October has ever begun so dry — the closest competitor is 1954, when it didn’t rain between Sept. 27 and Oct. 7.
The dry stretch is expected to last — at least in Juneau — through Friday, Vaughan said.
“Tuesday night into Wednesday we’ll start seeing the clouds, and the precipitation will follow,” she said.
It’s likely to start along the outer coast from Sitka southward, particularly over Prince of Wales and Ketchikan, then gradually extend northward as the week progresses.
“It finally starts taking a northerly push up through the panhandle Friday morning to where maybe Friday afternoon, overnight, is when Juneau would start seeing some light rain.”
• Contact reporter James Brooks at 523-2258 or james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com.
