Anchorage Daily News

From where it sits on the calendar, Thursday should have been smack in the middle of the warmest time of year in Anchorage.

Instead, the high temperature of a mere 56 degrees - 10 degrees below normal - equaled a record in the National Weather Service's annals: the lowest high temperature for a July 17.

It was also the rainiest July 17 since 1928 - a fact that contributed to the Weather Service's decision to issue a flood warning Friday morning for the Skwentna and Yentna rivers in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

Like the gloomy Eeyore of Winnie-the-Pooh stories, Southcentral Alaska has had some trouble shaking off the clouds in recent days. Weather experts weren't predicting things to turn around anytime soon.

"We are just pretty much stuck in this pattern," said Weather Service forecaster Shaun Baines. "There's always hope. You never know if you might get a change in the pattern. We've seen brief periods of that, but nothing lasting."

The city averages about 15 days per summer that break 70 degrees, but there have only been two so far this summer, said Bob Hopkins, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Anchorage. And time is running out.

"We'll probably get another few, but who knows?" Hopkins said. "Our biggest chance for warm weather is now and we've got this big pool of cool air over us."

There are a number of factors that could be influencing the recent dismal weather, including La Nina and Pacific decadal oscillation - both of which can turn ocean temperatures cooler, he said.

Whatever the cause, cool temperatures have kept snow in the mountains for longer this summer, so there is still a good amount of runoff flowing down, inundating rivers, Baines said. That, combined with the soggy skies - especially with Thursday's 1-inch record rain - has threatened to cause some flooding in the Mat-Su this weekend, he said.

"Normally, daily precipitation records are not that big of a deal," Baines said. "But the fact that we did get one inch of rain in a day is a big deal because it doesn't happen that often."

The average annual rainfall in Anchorage is about 16 inches, he said.

The Weather Service issued a flood warning just before noon Friday, and it was to remain in effect through Sunday. Baines said he was expecting mostly "nuisance flooding" along the Skwentna and Yentna rivers during that time.

Already Friday afternoon at the McDougall Lodge on the Yentna River near Lake Creek, the river, which had been slowly creeping up on the building over the past few days, had reached to within about 30 feet of the lodge, said owner Leslie Manners.

"This morning when we woke up, it came up a couple feet," Manners said. "The river has gone into the front yard. The boats are usually in the river. Now, they're in the front yard."

For now, the biggest threat the water posed to her lodge was to fishing, which was being affected by the cloudy floodwaters, she said. The lodge itself is up a small incline and likely wouldn't be threatened, she said.

Find James Halpin online at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call him at 257-4589.

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