(NWS Photo)
An atmospheric river will saturate the outer coast on Thursday (7-10-25), hitting the southern panhandle of Alaska with heavy rains.
Nathan Compton is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Juneau. In an interview with KCAW on Tuesday (7-8-25) he said Sitka would experience its heaviest rainfall on Thursday afternoon and into the evening
“It’s going to start over in Yakutat. It’s going to drift down to Sitka and just move right on down to Prince of Wales Island,” Compton said.
Forecasters expect the system to bring around an inch of rain to Sitka and two inches to Ketchikan. Nevertheless, Compton said it’s unlikely the system will be strong enough to trigger landslide activity. He said while the National Weather Service doesn’t forecast landslides, it works closely with the United States Geological Survey to determine whether atmospheric conditions are right, historically, for landslides to occur.
“Typically, we would like to see heavy rainfall for extended periods of time, and then strong winds. On top of that, I’m talking greater than 40 mile per hour gusts,” Compton said. “And it doesn’t look like we’re going to be seeing that anything like that for this upcoming system.”
While Southeast can’t expect a break from the rainy summer later this week, there may be a glimmer of sun on Wednesday evening. But Compton said the break will be followed shortly by heavy winds.
“I don’t want people to get the wrong ideas like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s sunny. Let’s go out.’ No, it’s going to be hitting directly after that,” Compton said.
Compton says the best place to stay informed as the atmospheric river develops is on the National Weather Service website or the regional office’s facebook page. Sitka’s local landslide warning dashboard can be found here.
