Flood — Juneau Borough, Alaska

2022-09-26 to 2022-09-27 · near Douglas, Juneau Borough, Alaska

Event narrative

Jordan Creek in Juneau started to rise in response to the heavy rain through September 26th with it going over minor flood stage of 9.7 feet in the late evening hours. Water levels continued to rise at a fast pace from 12 hour rain of amounts of over 1.50 inches. The runoff from the heavy rain pushed Jordan Creek just above moderate flood stage and crested at 10.58 feet before receding below flood stage by the morning hours of September 27th. There was significant flooding of roads and parking lots around the Jordan Creek area and along Jordan Avenue. Some homes did put up sandbags to stop flood waters from coming into their homes with some water getting right up to other residences.

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 → (58.3675, -134.5782)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1058950. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.