Debris Flow — Haines Borough, Alaska

2022-09-26 · near Klukwan, Haines Borough, Alaska

Event narrative

During the early morning hours of September 26th a large landslide came down along the Haines Highway around 23 mile and blocked the highway. AKDOT was on site by day break to assess the situation and begin to clear the material. The highway was reopened by the afternoon. Six hour rainfall amounts ranged from 0.50 to as much as 1.75 at higher elevation. This is after the area had been experiencing heavy rainfall.

Wider weather episode

An atmospheric river moved out of the north Pacific into the Gulf of Alaska September 25th and started to impact the northern half of the Southeast Alaska's panhandle. This event brought in very high amounts of moisture, winds and very warm temps through September 27th. These warm temps rose the freezing levels to be above 9 thousand feet to increase the amount of melt from glacier in headwaters of the Taiya River. Rain amounts from this event ranged from 3 to 5 inches in 36 hours. The heavy rain and high freezing levels produced significant amounts of runoff to cause moderate flood along the Taiya River near Skagway in Dyea and around the Jordan Creek area near Juneau from mid morning on September 26th through the morning of September 27th.

As the front moved through the area there was a wind shift in the afternoon hours of September 26th and with the ground very wet from the heavy rain caused a tree to fall which triggered a shallow landslide in downtown Juneau to damaged 3 homes. The heavy rain also triggered a landslide near mile marker 26 along the Haines Highway Monday afternoon and 2 near mile marker 31 along Glacier Highway in Juneau one around 1700AKST and then again in the early morning of September 27th.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (59.3799, -135.8777)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1058907. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.