Ketchikan woke up Monday morning to a winter wonderland.
Remi Cothren was headed to work and wasn’t going to let the snow stand in her way. She was walking down the slushy sidewalk in pointed silver heels. Luckily, she was flanked by her friends Elaine Strait and Ellie Lopez.
“We held her hand while she was going down the hill,” Lopez explained.
“I only slipped like once,” said Cothren.
The trio said they were excited for their first opportunity to break out their winter apparel. The secret? Wool.
“Probably just too many horrible layers and then one big coat to hide it all,” Cothren said when asked to describe her winter fashion.
Strait was wearing a fur hat and rain boots. She said she was a fan of the snow. Cothren not so much.
“I’m pro-snow when it’s nice, fluffy snow. This is just slush. So when the snowy snow comes around, I’ll be very happy,” said Strait.
“It’s not fun to drive in,” Cothren added.
Strait turned to look at her. “You can’t drive!”
“Yeah, but I can sit in the passenger seat in fear,” Cothren laughed.
Businesses also seem to have mixed feelings about the wintery whiteness blanketing the city. The breakfast counter at the Pioneer Cafe was packed but across town, Dani Martin, a pilot for Taquan Air – a floatplane company that flies people and mail to and from Metlakatla, Hyder, and Prince of Wales Island – said she legally can’t fly into known icing conditions or snow squalls.
“We won’t go out if it’s really bad out,” she said. “Like, we’re not flying this morning, we’re all sitting in the break room drinking coffee.”
Martin said she’s grateful to be on the ground on a day like this, even if they had to spend all morning cleaning snow off the planes with brooms.
“I like the snow a lot more than the rain. And I love skiing. But I hate it when it comes to airplanes,” said Martin who also lives on a sailboat. She said she’s enjoying it, but after a while, the white stuff can start to get pretty old.
“Some mornings, it feels like I’m shoveling off my boat-slash-home, and then I’m shoveling out my car, and then I come to work and I shovel out some airplanes. So I don’t like the snow on those days,” she laughed.
Climatologist Rick Thoman said it isn’t every fall that Ketchikan gets a good snow before Hyder or Petersburg.
He attributed the flakes to a very cold, low-pressure system that came down from the northwest Gulf of Alaska and is hovering just west of Prince of Wales Island.
“The overnight weather models show a gap in snowfall in the Petersburg and Wrangell areas with more ahead for southern Southeast,” Thoman said.
Further north, Juneau was also seeing snow. Sean Jones with the National Weather Service there said Alaskans across the region can expect the early week to be snowy or rainy but then, “Going forward beyond that, we’re looking at a very, very dry pattern for the entirety of the Panhandle as we have nice high pressure building in the Yukon. So it’s going to be nice and cold,” said Jones.
That means a cold, dry stretch in the Alaska panhandle. Jones said across the region, this has been a wetter month than average. However, for this point in the year, Southeast Alaska is still about 20 inches of rain behind schedule.
For some in Ketchikan, the forecast meant something very different.
“I’m in a tent, and I got robbed in this town about three times. I mean, it’s kind of hard,” said a man who didn’t want to be identified due to the stigma of homelessness. He said he doesn’t mind snow, per se – it’s part of winter – but it’s different when you’re living in it.
Ketchikan currently doesn’t have any low-barrier shelter options for the unhoused. A proposal for a winter warming shelter died last month following a funding veto by the Ketchikan Borough mayor. It has raised questions about how unhoused members of the community are going to remain safe through the coming snows and cold weather.
Nearby, a dog without a leash was frolicking in the snow. He gravitated to a woman huddled in the doorway of a bank. William Karl was out walking his dog across the street.
“I enjoy it. My stepdaughter does anyway. She’s been waiting patiently for it,” he said.
