Heavy Rain

I'm on the road and unable to do justice to the story at present, but heavy rain in western and interior Alaska is the big headline this week.

First, the east-central interior from the Alaska Range to the White Mountains saw a very notable episode of heavy rain on Friday evening and early Saturday; here are rain totals courtesy of the NWS:

Most of this fell in little over 12 hours.  Here's a map sent by Rick Thoman for Fairbanks-land:

Following hot on the heels of this event, a big rain is unfolding for the Seward Pensinsula and northwestern Alaska, with forecasts suggesting multi-day totals that could break longstanding records:

Tuesday through Saturday AM rainfall forecast from the GFS. This does not include the rains that have already fallen. For Nome-land this is in the "unprecedented" territory. For Kotzebue and east, August 1994 is the only similar event. #akwx @Climatologist49 @KNOMnews @KotzNews pic.twitter.com/YMNk47HVoN

— Rick Thoman (@AlaskaWx) July 27, 2021

It's only been a few weeks since we were talking about heavy rain in the northwest, so this will add to the already substantial seasonal anomaly.

Here are the NWS estimates of total rainfall over the past several days: