Anchorage Daily News

Massive black clouds, torrential rains and violent winds swept across Anchorage on Friday as if the city had been hit by a July thunderstorm. There was only one monumental problem: It wasn't July, and when July weather arrives in January, it spells chaos.

Main streets became rivers flowing between snow berms. On Arctic Boulevard, the flooding was so bad parts were closed to traffic. Elsewhere on the main roads, cars trailed wakes as they hydroplaned over the asphalt.

City manager Mike Abbott said Friday night that officials were monitoring heavy flooding along Chester Creek, Furrow Creek in Ocean View and a drainage system in Eagle River near Breckenridge Drive. Street maintenance crews had been out since the thaw began clearing storm drains, but some drainages were getting backed up because of ice in the culverts, he said.

A swamp along Chester Creek in Tikishla Park became a huge lake. Downstream, where the yards of homes back up to the creek, basements flooded in a couple of homes.

The bicycle underpass beneath Arctic Boulevard at Valley of the Moon Park served as a giant overflow culvert for the flooding creek, but still the waters overflowed the roadway for 50 yards. Water was up more than 512 feet above the frozen creek bed, an apparent record for the height if not for volume, said U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist Chad Smith, who was at a measuring station along the creek.

"The channel is full of ice and the culverts are full of ice, and with all the rain and snow melt, the water has nowhere to go," Smith said.

Houses close to the creek had water slopping into their backyards. Some yards were several feet under water and beginning to threaten structures.

Homeowner John O'Hara said that early in the afternoon water began pouring through electrical sockets in his basement wall. By evening, the water in the basement was about 5 inches deep. O'Hara slowed the rising water by removing a toilet to open the pipe to drain.

"The level of water in this basement would probably be above 4 feet right now if I didn't pull that toilet," he said.

Still, rising waters were beginning to push a section of drywall loose in his home as it crept up a TV stand, couch, speakers and other belongings. A sump pump futilely cycled water from the house back to the creek.

"There's nowhere to put it. The water's just going to come right back in," O'Hara said. "I don't think there is anything we can do right now, realistically."

Next door, overflow was pushing across a road to within inches of the door of the duplex Brooks Pleninger rents. His home had been spared flooding, but his adjoining neighbors' garages were inundated, he said.

In the past, Pleninger said, the water has "gotten high occasionally, but there's been nothing like this. This is way worse than anything I've seen."

Rising waters were only the half of it. Residents of the Anchorage Bowl, unused to winds of such velocity, were also getting a tiny taste of what life is like on the Anchorage Hillside where it gusted to 100 mph when the first big storm hit Wednesday, and was getting up near 100 mph again on Friday. The winds weren't even close to that bad down off the Chugach Mountain foothills, but they were enough to scatter garbage cans, send debris flying and set old Christmas trees to rolling like tumbleweeds.

"We got some monster blasts here,'' said Helen O'Harra, a resident of Rogers Park. "It just set off the car alarm across the street. It's pretty fierce."

On better-drained side streets, wind and rain teamed to work like a natural Zamboni polishing once snow-covered pavements into skating rinks. Cars slid. Pedestrians slipped. Schools closed on Friday for the third day in a row because of the difficulties of both walking and driving.

Ski hills shut down because it was too wet and windy to be out. Ponds formed at the base of the Hilltop Ski Area and atop them waves grew as the wind blew.

Electrical power went out in locations around the city and in Eagle River, and in Hope and Cooper Landing on the Kenai Peninsula, as gusts took down tree limbs and trees that then fell onto power lines.

Noting the flooding and slickness, the Alaska Department of Transportation issued a warning to motorists to be on the alert, as if somehow anyone could have missed what was going down.

The world had turned topsy-turvy.

The high temperature in Anchorage hit 50 degrees, the normal high for the day in Atlanta, Ga.

A record high for the date, that 50 degrees topped the old high by 6 degrees, and came within 6 degrees of topping the all-time monthly high of 56 recorded on Jan. 7, 1934.

Georgians must have been jealous. It was 27 degrees in Atlanta, 12 to the north in Philadelphia and zero in Chicago as the pocket of cold, arctic air that had been anchored over Alaska in late December and early January arrived in the Lower 48. It began to slide south and east early in the week, opening the way for the invasion of that warm, low-pressure system from the Pacific tropics that Alaskans call "The Pineapple Express.''

This time, the Express came north with enough power to superheat half the state.

Rain and snow fell in Bethel, where 38-degree temperatures and mushy, sloppy trail postponed for at least 24 hours the start of the Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race. The high temperature in Fairbanks hit 47. On Sunday it had bottomed out there at 44 below.

The 91-degree swing in a week was radical, but not out of line with what was happening in other parts of the state. The Susitna Valley saw similar temperature changes.

Anchorage resident Tim Kelley and his wife took their snowmachines to the family cabin at Alexander Creek in the Valley last week when it was well below zero and decided they better head back for town -- or not make it back --- as temperatures crawled out of the bottom of the thermometer and began to shoot for the sky on Thursday.

"A week ago at the Point MacKenzie store, it was 36 below,'' Kelley reported Thursday night. "Today it was almost 50. Crazy.''

He spent Friday working from his home on the Anchorage Hillside. That seemed a more sensible idea than venturing out, given the rain slick local streets and 80 mph gusts of wind buffeting his house for most of the day. They did not begin to ease until evening when the National Weather Service finally dropped the high-wind warning for the Hillside and Turnagain Arm.

To the north, Palmer and Wasilla -- which had been hammered by fierce, bitter winds when a cold-air mass anchored itself over the state early in the month -- were largely spared the winds this time. Instead, they got a monsoon.

Intersections flooded ankle deep. Rapids sprouted in the creeks running along the road shoulders. Lakes formed in yards.

It was much the same in Girdwood. Chugach National Forest avalanche forecaster Carl Skustad, who early in the day had warned skiers and snowmachiners that "we are in the middle of the largest avalanche and storm cycle of the year,'' was by evening home dealing with the day-to-day realities of the weather. He was out digging a drainage ditch around his house.

"Our whole driveway was actually a river,'' he said. "It was pouring down sheets.''

Nearby Alyeska Resort was reporting a temperature of 43 degrees and rain, but the winds, which had peaked at 115 mph on Max's Mountain, were finally easing. Snow conditions were described as "damp.'' The resort was closed for the third straight day, but hoped to resume operations today, weather permitting.

The weather service was predicting more rain and warm temperatures today, but then a gradual cooling trend back toward normal. Skustad, who is scheduled to work today, was anxious to see if the heat wave had at least helped to stabilize mountain snowpacks along Turnagain Arm. The rain line, he said, had climbed all the way up to 3,000 feet.

Rain could help bond several weak layers of snow that have accumulated since December, or not. Skustad warned that anyone planning to head out for the weekend should keep seriously in mind the 24-hour rule, which says that most deadly avalanches happen within 24 hours of a major change in the weather.

Daily News reporter Stephanie Komarnitsky contributed to this story.

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