Anchorage sets new record for getting an inch of snow this late in the season

Melting snowfall dusts homes on a thoroughfare successful Anchorage’s Jewel Lake area connected Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Chris Klint/Alaska Public Media)

A dusting of late-season snowfall overnight Wednesday near Anchorage an inch person to its all-time snowfall grounds — but meteorologists don’t expect it to beryllium broken.

Michael Kutz pinch nan National Weather Service said 1 inch of snowfall had fallen astatine nan charismatic measuring position adjacent nan Anchorage airdrome by Thursday morning. More snowfall fell astatine higher elevations, pinch 3 inches reported connected nan Anchorage Hillside.

The snow, he said, was portion of a upwind strategy expected to bring mixed snowfall and rainfall to nan region this week.

“We had immoderate colder aerial moving successful from nan north, mixing successful pinch nan moisture coming up from nan south,” he said. “And we conscionable hap to beryllium wherever they came together.”

Kutz said that it’s not uncommon for Anchorage to spot sporadic snowfall successful May, and that Thursday’s snowfall is not nan latest ever recorded successful nan season. It does people nan latest day connected which Alaska’s largest metropolis has received an inch aliases much of snow, breaking nan erstwhile grounds group connected May 6, 1955.

The upwind work says periods of snowfall whitethorn proceed successful parts of Southcentral Alaska done Friday morning, peculiarly successful higher elevations for illustration Turnagain Pass and Hatcher Pass, arsenic good arsenic connected nan Anchorage and Eagle River hillsides, which could spot an further 2 to 4 inches. Up to an inch of further snowfall is imaginable astatine little elevations. It’s not apt to instrumentality connected section roads, according to Kutz, owed to nan warming weather.

“Fortunately, nan roadways are warmer aliases supra freezing,” he said. “So speech of possibly a small slush aliases something, that’ll beryllium astir it connected nan roadways.”

Another ray snowfall past period pushed Anchorage into 2nd place for its highest recorded wintertime snowfall ever, down nan grounds of 134.5 inches group during nan wintertime of 2011-2012. With Thursday’s snow, Kutz said nan metropolis stands astatine 133.3 inches of snowfall, conscionable complete an inch distant from nan snowiest year.

Asked if he thinks Anchorage still has a chance of breaking nan grounds truthful precocious successful nan season, Kutz said “it’s going to beryllium close” but laughed astatine nan possibility.

“I deliberation we’re going to person a patient clasp connected 2nd place,” he said.

Correction: An earlier type of this communicative misstated this winter’s full snowfall. It is 133.3 inches, not 133.8 inches.