Ketchikan's week of rain keeps community on high alert; while other communities on both sides of the border deal with weather related concerns

Video from a Ketchikan resident highlights the high water of the Ketchikan dam over the weekend, a weather event that almost required an evacuation of parts of the city
(video from Lighthouse Excursion FB page)

While Prince Rupert residents have seen their fair share of rain in recent weeks, it's seemingly nothing like that that has arrived on the Alaska panhandle with our neighbours to the north in Ketchikan bearing a particularly intense part of the never ending weather systems.

Civic officials in the Panhandle city were keeping a sharp eye on the rising levels of the Ketchikan Lake Dam and Ketchikan Creek over the weekend, coming within inches of issuing a significant mandatory evacuation for a portion of the city. 

Earlier in the day they had put in place a voluntary evacuation for those areas deemed at potential risk.

Fortunately, the water levels stabilized as the rain began to moderate reducing the risk of a dam failure that had previously been feared.

As the Anchorage Daily News notes, the Lake crested at 350.1 feet, which nearly broke a National Weather Service record set back in 2015.

Ketchikan's public radio station KRBD provided some of the background to the weekend's dramatic themes with this item.

The community has recorded over 23 inches of rain over the course of the last week, one of a number of Alaska communities to bear the brunt of some extreme weather.

Further up the coast of Alaska things are dire in Haines, which saw landslides earlier this week and face the prospect of more potentially as the rain doesn't let up

Hillside residents should prepare to evacuate, says Haines Mayor

Alaskan communities were not the only ones to feel the extremes of weather in the last week, in British Columbia, the Stewart region was impacted with heavy snow and downed power lines.

While Kitimat declared a Water Advisory on Sunday, that after a weekend of heavy rains.

Prince Rupert Residents have been under an ongoing Water Advisory dating back to the End of October, with turbidity issues continuing to plague the delivery of drinking water to the community.

That Advisory was the second of the year since an August alert was issued following the heavy rains of that month, that advisory was lifted towards the end of September

For more notes related to weather events in both Northwest BC and Southeast Alaska see our archive page here.