Haines is experiencing one of its warmest, driest springs on record. Conditions in northern Southeast have not yet reached drought level, but low precipitation in the spring and eroding winter snowpack bode ill for the future.
For the first time in the history of the U.S. Drought Monitor, a federal organization that monitors drought throughout the U.S reported ‘extreme drought’ in southern Southeast Alaska, the wettest part of the United States. Haines and northern Southeast are reported as ‘abnormally dry.’
But Haines has received an even smaller percentage of its average rainfall the past year than its drought-reporting neighbors. According to the National Weather Service in Juneau, in 2018 Ketchikan, which is in ‘extreme drought,’ received 75 percent of its normal rainfall (106.59 of 141.25 inches of rainfall), while Haines received only 70 percent of its normal rainfall (33.75 out of 48.51 inches of rainfall). Skagway received 90 percent of its normal rainfall, 24.5 out of 27.05 inches of rainfall.
Why has drought been declared in Ketchikan and not in Haines? “Drought is really about the intersection between low precipitation and the impacts that it has on society,” Richard Thoman, climatologist for the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP).
“The drought in Southeast, it’s really from Wrangell southward,” said Thoman. “Those places have had reduced or even no hydropower electricity production. There have even been voluntary water restrictions at times in Wrangell and Metlakatla,” said Thoman. “For the Haines area, we have below normal precipitation, that’s just the way these storm tracks have worked out.”
100 percent of Haines’ electricity is currently supplied through Alaska Power and Telephone (AP&T) hydropower projects in Skagway. AP&T operations manager Darren Belisle said that he does not expect hydropower disruptions this season.
Last May, AP&T was forced to run a diesel generator at their hydropower plant 24 hours a day, due to low water in lakes in a year of poor precipitation and snowmelt.
Drier and warmer
Following a regional trend, Haines weather stations at the airport and on West Fair Drive report only 70 to 80 percent of normal rainfall over the past two years. Haines experienced its sixth warmest May on record in 2019, with a daily average temperature of about 54 degrees Fahrenheit, according to local weather stations. In the past 50 years, Haines summer weather has increased by more than two degrees Fahrenheit, according to ACCAP climate data.
Unusual storm patterns are the cause of two years of warm, dry weather in Southeast, said Thoman.
Storms are being pushed away from the Panhandle by the polar jet stream—a high-altitude stream of rapid winds that blow around the earth at mid and polar latitudes—explained Aaron Jacobs, senior hydrologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Juneau.
“During 2014, 2015, and 2016, the jet stream was more north and pointed at Southeast,” said Jacobs. This year, “we’re not getting as many weather systems,” he said. “Global weather patterns change the jet stream’s location, within a changing climate,” said Jacobs.
Local meteorologist Jim Green said, “I’m a little bit more on the fence that (climate change) is what is happening with this drought situation. We didn’t have weather balloons, satellites and so forth 100 years ago, so how do we know what the jet stream was doing?” said Green. “You can see that the period we are in now is nothing out of the ordinary since 1989 and if you extended back, you would get the same impression.”
Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) show cyclical dry periods in the northern panhandle. Green said that, in terms of meteorological data, the current dry period resembles a number of other dry periods: between 2013 and 2014, 2008 to 2009, 2002 to 2003, and 1989 to 1991. He called the current dry period “unremarkable.”
“I think we’re in another dry period that happens a couple of years in a decade,” said Green.
While dry periods have come and gone in Haines, drought definitions have evolved over time. “All droughts are local. Droughts are defined from the perspective of the people experiencing them,” said Deb Bathke, scientist at the National Drought Mitigation Center at a drought workshop in Juneau last month.
Drought indicators in Southeast vary not only from those that apply in the Lower 48, but also between communities. And even without a drought declaration in Haines, residents are feeling the effects.
Kate Saunders, who has been gardening in Haines for 32 years with rain catchments said she isn’t collecting enough water for her garden. “It has been this bad before,” said Saunders, “but I don’t remember it being this bad this early in the summer. This is more of an issue I usually find in July.” Saunders waters a greenhouse, raised beds, and an orchard with between 200 and 300 gallons of water a day. She collects water in an 1,100-gallon tank for her plants, but she said she’s going to have to order another.
“It’s terrible,” said resident Betsy VanBurgh, who has been using water collection methods like rain catchments and groundwater seepage since 1992. “The groundwater table is going way, way down. It’s going to take a lot of rain to take it up a bit,” she said.
VanBurgh said part of the issue has to do with low snowfall. This past winter, the borough received less than half its usual snowfall, with some areas getting less than a fifth the usual amount of snow, according to the National Weather Service in Juneau. A ‘snow drought’ was declared in Haines by the drought monitor.
For the past two years, VanBurgh hasn’t had to dig out her plants from the snow, which at first, she thought was a relief. But the lack of snow also dried up the streams around her house, which are usually fed by snowmelt. “The creeks that usually run pretty darn good are really, really low. They usually have more water in them this time of year,” said VanBurgh.
Snowpack as an indicator of future drought
Historically, Haines’ large snowpack has sustained the area through abnormally dry and hot weather. Mountain snowpack is essential for runoff to fill water reservoirs, said Jacobs
“This winter was the least snowy on record,” said Erik Stevens, director and forecaster of the Haines Avalanche Center, indicating National Weather Service data. This year, Haines received 93 percent of its average precipitation, but only 34 percent of its average snowfall.
“The average winter snowline has been retreating up the mountain. It used to be pretty close to sea level,” said Stevens, “and now it’s close to 1,500 or 2,000 ft.”
The most accurate way to monitor snowpack is through the Snow Water Equivalent (SWE), said Stevens. SWE measures snow density, or how much water is in the snowpack. Haines has had one station measuring SWE since 2017, located on Flower Mountain at 2,500 ft.
Because climate averages are typically based on 30-year periods, “We don’t really have enough data from it,” said Stevens. “I’ve seen it change over the nine years that I’ve been here,” he said.
Snowpack and summer drought are also connected through salmon. Andy Piston, pink and chum salmon leader of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Southeast, said that dry conditions and low snowpack “couldn’t possibly help” spawning or migrating salmon in the summer.
Pink salmon, which spawn in more than 2,500 streams across Southeast, “depend on either snowpack or rain,” said Piston. Fish and Game was very concerned about the 2018 season, that showed a run of only 8 million pink salmon, compared to an average harvest of between 27 and 44 million.
“The biggest impact is you end up with warmer water, and salmon are more stressed out. They are more vulnerable to predation from bears, or anything else that wants to feed on salmon. If you can imagine fish having to mill about on salt water, it adds stress in all sorts of ways,” said Piston.
Fish and Game research biologist Brian Elliot said, “the snowpack amount, that’s kind of mother nature’s storage system, storing water over the winter and releasing it gradually throughout the summer. If we don’t get a lot of snowpack and we get a lot of hot weather, that storage system is going to be gone by August.”
In general, snowpack on rivers insulates water, blocks wind, and helps keep the water viable by not freezing, said Elliot. “Think of it like an igloo,” he said.
Sockeye salmon could be disturbed on their migration routes, “if they’re going through places where their water level is lower than it should be,” said Elliot. The sockeye salmon that travel through the channels of the Tsirku delta up to Chilkat Lake, anywhere from 19 to 23 Mile, might face low water levels, he said, because those channels rely on a mix of glacial runoff and rainwater.
But Elliot doesn’t worry too much about the effects of drought and low snowpack conditions on salmon in the Chilkat Valley, because of the abundance of glacially fed waterways. Dry conditions will have an effect on salmon runs, “just in that there will be reduced water levels,” he said. Without as much rain or snowpack, the water will be more glacially influenced, and will become more turbid.