Flood — Taiya Inlet, Alaska

2022-09-26 to 2022-09-27 · near Skagway, Taiya Inlet, Alaska

Event narrative

The Taiya River began to rise from the heavy rain and ice melt in the early evening of September 25th with it going above minor flood stage of 16.5 feet by the early morning of September 26th. As the heavy rain persisted along with enhanced runoff from the warm temperaturesin the headwaters the Taiya River rose rapidly right through the moderate flood stage of 17 feet and crested 18.84 feet in the afternoon hours of September 26th. The heavy rain moved passed the area in the evening and the river started to recede. The Taiya River went below moderate flooding by mid morning on September 27th and below minor flood stage in the early afternoon. The National Park Service closed the Chilkoot trail due to flooding impacts of thigh deep or higher swift cold water. There was also a significantamount of flooding that closed the Dyea campground along with a house in Dyea that was surrounded by 2 feet of water. There was some damage from erosionto the roads in Dyea, one in particular leading to the cemetery.

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 → (59.4920, -135.3661)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1059052. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.