Sunday’s .62 inches of rain pushed July’s total rainfall to 6.05 inches, setting a new monthly record and breaking the former record of 5.49 inches set in July 1950.
As of Tuesday, July’s total of 6.30 inches was making the month feel more like October, which usually drops about eight inches of rain.
The 30-year normal rainfall for July is 1.55 inches.
“Glub, glub. My toes are already webbed. It’s terrible,” said 39-year-resident Kathy Pardee Jones, whose family operates the Valley of the Eagles Golf Links. Business has been down 30 percent or more compared to previous summers. June’s 4.53 inches of rain was second-highest on record and nearly triple the 30-year norm of 1.53 inches for the month.
“Whoever out there who’s doing the rain dance, if they’d just change their footing, we’d like a little sun,” Pardee Jones said.
Joyce Town at Oceanfront RV Park said travelers aren’t sticking around as much as they do in a typical summer. Visiting Yukoners are shortening trips, perhaps hoping for better weather on a later visit. “There are a lot of people coming and going. They’re trying to find some sunshine and some warmth. My electric bill is going to be sky high.”
Wet weather, though, is good news for the valley’s fish and berry crop and it may not hurt numbers of visitors taking tours off cruise ships. Cruise tour operator Dan Egolf said rain doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on the number of passengers who take tours. Fog, he said, is a bigger issue, as it reduces views, including of wildlife.
“People who come to Southeast Alaska are aware it’s a temperate rainforest. It isn’t much of an issue. We’ve had some of our best tours in the rain. You see these little old ladies from Iowa with mascara running down their faces, enjoying it. It adds a mood to the tours,” Egolf said. He recounted the reaction of a recent visitor looking at an eagle through a spotting scope, even though fog obscured the view.
“She let out a big sigh. The first time somebody sees something – even if it’s not perfect conditions – can be a real successful tour,” Egolf said. “It all depends on your perspective.”
For example, he said, residents of the U.S. Southwest were “gun-shy about rain” for years. “But in the last four or five years, with everything burning up down there, now they want to get under a cloud.”
Generally, residents seem more upset by foul summer weather than visitors, he said.
Commercial fisheries biologist Randy Bachman of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said a rainy, cool summer is great news if you’re a young salmon. “Fish and rain get along very well,” he said. “More water means more area to spawn and more area for rearing, plus more insects for rearing fish to eat.”
In cooler temperatures, less glacial silt runs into lakes, leading to clearer water and more production of zooplankton, the main food for young salmon. For juvenile coho and king salmon rearing in local streams, more water also means more areas to hide from predators. Young salmon heading out to sea are most vulnerable to predators – like Dolly Varden, rockfish, seagulls, and humpback whales – in near-shore areas and inlets, Bachman said.
“They tend to see less of (those predators) the further offshore they are,” Bachman said. Near-shore areas swollen with rainwater give small fish better odds at eluding prey, he said.
Forester Roy Josephson said summer’s heavy rains have taken a toll on some logging roads in the Kelsall, but rain is good for 8,000 spruce seedlings the state planted in the spring. And it should make for a strong berry crop, he said, noting the “tremendous” pollen drop in spring. “All this moisture should make the berries plump.”