A storm that dumped several inches of snow on the Anchorage area was winding down Saturday afternoon.
At least 4 inches of snow had fallen across Anchorage and Eagle River overnight through midday Saturday, with small bursts of additional snowfall expected through the evening, National Weather Service forecasters said.
“The heavier snow has wound down for the area,” Pam Pietrycha, a forecaster with the National Weather Service’s Anchorage office, said early Saturday afternoon. “We might get a few bursts of moderate snowfall off and on, but as for accumulation-wise, it’s not going to add up to too much more.”
The weather service’s West Anchorage office had measured just over 4 inches of snow by early Saturday afternoon, and Pietrycha said the Anchorage Hillside and Eagle River likely received higher accumulations totals, though they were still in the process of measuring those.
She said the weather service was also keeping an eye out for another storm system that’s expected to bring lower temperatures and even more snow to Southwest Alaska and parts of Southcentral early this coming week, beginning Monday.
“Right now, it does look like most of the snowfall will fall along the Eastern Kenai and up into Prince William Sound area, so we’ll just have to keep an eye on it and see how it sets up,” Pietrycha said.
It has been one of the snowiest seasons on record in Anchorage: The latest totals will likely push this season into fifth place for the most snowfall the city has received in a single season, at more than 113.8 inches of snow, Pietrycha said.
She said Southcentral was also expected to see colder air start to arrive in the area by early next week, with temperatures in the single digits and teens for most of the region.
“Those warmer temperatures that we enjoyed the last week or two are going to be replaced by the colder air mass,” she said.
The shift in weather conditions follows this week’s windstorm, which brought hurricane-force winds to Anchorage, including a peak gust of 94 mph recorded at Arctic Valley.