The strongest storm to ever hit Alaska is knocking on the doorsteps of the Aleutians. While this event is one for the history books, it does not figure to have much direct impact on the lives of residents of the Kenai.
Pamela ZA-TAN-EK Szatanek with the National Weather Service in Anchorage says that their models have shown a record low barometric pressure in Shemya: “Shemya is one of the farthest chains out on the Aleutians. So, what ended up happening was the instrumentation and the Air Force facility out there, the mean sea level pressure was recorded at 928.9mb, which makes it the lowest land-based pressure on-record for the Aleutians. There’s actually another low that is south of the Kenai Peninsula which is actually getting zero attention whatsoever because the other is such a monster!”
She offered details about how the latter storm will impact the Kenai: “That low is on a collision course to southeast – so, when I say southeast, I mean Juneau and Ketchikan, but right now, that low is south of Kodiak. That one – the northern part of it – is going to be in the Gulf of Alaska, and it’s going to bring some wind and the precipitation shield from that one is going to stay out of it, but I would think that it would be getting a little bit windy with that one that’s passing to the south. The southern storm is definitely much closer to Kenai.”
Bottom line, while the wind will be blustery, the result for the peninsula is not terribly exciting: “What I think you guys [on the Kenai] will see this weekend is really cold temperatures. I wish I had some great news, like it was going to warm up to 40 or, some people love snow and they’d love to hear that they’re getting a foot of snow, but I don’t have anything particularly exciting for Kenai.”
While the low-pressure event in the Aleutians is a rare, record-setting event, how often do these sorts of storms impact the Kenai? “When the typhoon season gets going, we had a couple of great typhoons this year that, when they went extra-tropical, came right over Kenai! This isn’t one of those particular events, but it’s still super cool because it has a tropical feed into it and then it just has an enormous amount of Siberian air in it.”
