Sitka was cloaked in a dense fog for most of Wednesday (1-21-26). While that’s not too unusual for a winter morning, heavy mist lingering into the afternoon and evening is less typical.
“We typically see it in marine environments. This time of year in Southeast Alaska, for it to be this persistent, a little more unusual,” said Jeff Garmon, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Juneau. “Usually, it’ll start burning off by noon, one o’clock, we’ll start to see breaks in it.”
He said wind typically picks up in the morning, “mixing up” the lowest portions of the atmosphere and pushing out the fog.
“That hasn’t happened because our environmental wind flow is very weak right now. We just don’t have much for wind,” Garmon said. “That is a little more unusual this time of year to see just almost dead calm out there at times.”
Garmon said anyone traveling should keep tabs on their flight schedule in the event that the lingering fog affects air travel, and any mariners should make sure their radar is working before they go out on the water.
“Make sure you got a chart plot or something, because I’ve run into this on the water. Running in the fog, you can get very disoriented very quickly,” Garmon said. “Just understand that that travel by land, sea, and air could be impacted by these lower visibilities.”
Garmon expects the fog to continue through the night into Thursday morning. He said Sitka should start seeing some breaks in the fog mid-morning through early afternoon, and winds will pick up at the end of this week.
