Flood — Matanuska Valley, Alaska

2022-07-19 to 2022-07-21 · near Palmer, Matanuska Valley, Alaska

Event narrative

Little Susitna River below Hatcher Pass Bridge peaked in action stage and was close to minor flood stage, as seen in hydrograph and data table. Data from this station's hydrograph were used to populate the verifying & peak times for this event.

Matanuska River at Old Glenn Hwy approached action stage, as seen in hydrograph and data table.

One of the emergency managers at Mat-SU EM had video of a flooded driveway but noted no other impacts had been observed.

Wider weather episode

After the two months of dry and sunny weather due to mostly upper level ridging in place across much of Alaska, the pattern flipped for the second half of the month to more of an upper level trough as the upper level ridge shifted to the east. This resulted in multiple storm systems moving into Southcentral with rounds of heavy rainfall that resulted in small streams and river rises in the area.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (61.7103, -149.2297)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1048252. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.