It has been a wet start to the workweek in Haines, Skagway, and Klukwan. And the rest of the week looks to be even wetter. KHNS’ Mike Swasey looks at the forecast with meteorologist Caleb Cravens from the National Weather Service in Juneau.

Swasey – Caleb, how’s the weather looking in the upper Lynn Canal this week? It seems to be off to a pretty soggy start. 

Cravens – It has indeed this week, you could say we have a parade of storms moving through the upper Lynn Canal area. 

Swasey – Well, I like that the parade of storms. I mean, it sounds like you would want to get out on the street and cheer for it, but you’d get really wet. 

Cravens – Yeah, you may not want to stand out and hope they throw you candy because they’re not gonna be throwing candy. It’s just gonna be rain and wind. 

Swasey – How big are the storms gonna be? What are we talking about, are big winds moving in as well? 

Cravens – So these storms, they are pretty good storms meaning that they’re going to bring widespread rainfall and gusty conditions. For example, the storms Tuesday evening that are going to be moving through the upper Lynn Canal area are going to be producing winds anywhere from 10 to 25 miles per hour, with maybe a few pockets of higher gusts, and then widespread rainfall anywhere between half an inch to an inch and a half for the remainder of Tuesday evening. 

I will say though, we have multiple storms moving through the area. But Wednesday, we try to look for the break days, and Wednesday does look like a break day, fortunately, also less rain. There’ll still be cloud cover, but it won’t be as wet and it won’t be as windy. But that won’t last long. 

Because then by Thursday, we have another system that moves right through, and this one’s even looking stronger than the one on Tuesday. Gusty conditions for that and more widespread rain, and it could be heavy at times. 

Swasey – Are we looking at snow in the higher elevations from these? 

Cravens – Yeah, it’s that time of year you know, we’re moving into our fall season. And we are looking at the potential for snow in the White Pass area. We’re not seeing any kind of indicators at the moment for snow at sea level. But we are starting to see some indicators that we could get a maybe a dusting of snow up to those higher elevations Thursday night or early Friday morning. 

Swasey – What are the temperatures looking like in both areas, like up at the pass and then again down at sea level?

Cravens – So we’re keeping temperatures near normal. For this time of year, there is a downward trend. We’re going into fall, and with that our temperature range is getting smaller and it’s getting cooler. So right now a normal range for the upper Lynn Canal area is anywhere in the low to mid-50s for highs, with lows around the mid to upper-40s. And that’s what we’re forecasting through the remainder of the week.

When the snow might come is from Thursday into Friday in those upper elevations, so around the White Pass area. We’re going with the mid-30s. So anytime you get temperatures hovering around that 32-degree mark is when we start looking at the potential for snow and it does look by the end of the week and into the weekend (that) we could be getting to those low to mid-30s around the White Pass, so that’s the area where we might see some snowfall. 

Swasey – How are the sea conditions looking?

Cravens – We can expect some elevated seas through the northern Lynn Canal area for Tuesday evening. We do have small craft advisories up to 25 knots, gusts to 40 knots, seas four to five feet. Going into Wednesday we still are expecting winds around 20 knots with seas 4 feet, but then with that next storm coming up on Thursday, they go back up to small craft (advisories). 

Swasey – Okay, so no heavy freezing spray yet, but…

Cravens – No, not quite cold enough for that but you know you will see some elevated seas with the winds that come through with these systems. 

Swasey – All right. Caleb, thanks so much for the call, I appreciate it. Have yourself a wonderful week. 

Cravens – Thanks, you do the same.

For a more detailed and up-to-the-minute forecast, visit weather.gov.