Freeze-Up Underway

Here's a webcam photo taken Saturday morning from Pro Music looking south across the Chena River in downtown Fairbanks. As you can see, there is some ice showing up now. With sub-freezing weather now in place, the rivers will freeze quickly over the next few days.

Tanana River is Up

The combination of high level snow melt and persistent rains the past week in the upper Tanana Valley have pushed the Tanana River up toward problem levels in the Fairbanks area. The hydrograph ending at 8am Wednesday morning shows the stage is now up to 23.6 feet at at Fairbanks. This level does not produce flooding per se but with the river running near bankful, bank erosion greatly increases, some water may start flowing into Piledriver Slough, and if it stays up this high for a couple days, groundwater may surface in the Perkins Landing area.

Soaking Rains Show Up in the Rivers

Here is a hydrograph of the level of the Chena River near the Wendell Street Bridge. The big rise late Thursday and Friday, more than three feet, is more than I would have expected, given that there wasn't that much rain. Even the Munson Ridge SnoTel, at 3100' MSL south of Chena Hot Springs got less than an inch of rain on Wednesday.