Heavy rainfall in Sitka on Monday (8-31-26) briefly increased local landslide risk. That’s according to a warning tool that tracks rainfall in the community.
Luka Silva is the coastal resilience manager at the Sitka Sound Science Center, which hosts the local landslide risk dashboard. He said the forecasting tool is meant to help community members make decisions about their own safety.
“We’re going into the rainy season, right? And we do have the data to show that landslides are much, much, much more likely to be happening in this sort of August to December timeframe,” Silva said in an interview with KCAW on Tuesday.
The dashboard estimates landslide risk in a couple of ways – data from the National Weather Service informs predictions three days in advance, while real-time rainfall informs the current risk level. In the two years Silva has been in the role, the dashboard has only jumped from low to medium risk a handful of times. One of those times was 7 p.m. on Monday.
“And what that really means is that our rainfall amount hit a level where there had been landslides in the past,” Silva said. “So it’s not that there’s always going to be landslides when that level of rain hits. You know, it happened last night, and we didn’t have any slides in town, but it did mean that other slides have happened at that amount of rainfall that we hit that last night.”
While no slides resulted from the heavy rains, Silva hopes Sitkans will walk away with a reminder to be prepared and use the dashboard as a tool when deciding whether to leave a landslide-prone area.
“I always think it’s worthwhile to really exercise caution, because while we don’t know that a landslide will happen, it could,” Silva said.
Silva recommends having a “hazard buddy” who lives outside of landslide-prone areas. When the risk level shifts to medium, consider staying with that person for the night. Silva also recommends keeping tabs on the National Weather Service website for the most up-to-date weather information, weather.gov/ajk. As for when to check the dashboard – Silva said there are some signs to watch out for.
“Heavier rainfall than you imagine is a big one,” Silva said. “Other environmental triggers we’ve seen that you could observe with your own eyes are, let’s say, if you live near a stream, for example, and you see water that normally runs clear running muddier or sort of darker. That’s a sign that we’ve seen before landslides in the past.”
For more information, including maps of landslide prone zones and other slide signs, visit sitkalandslide.org.
