Yakutat wind advisory expires; top gust 37 mph

Yakutat got through the weekend's windstorm with less than it was warned about. Forecasters had raised the possibility of gusts near 60 mph; the strongest recorded at the Yakutat airport Sunday was 37, at 5:27 pm.

The National Weather Service in Juneau let the wind advisory expire at 4 pm Sunday, though it said isolated gusts to 40 mph remained possible into the evening. By 6 pm it was blowing 15 with gusts to 24.

The storm was a strong low moving into the northern Gulf of Alaska. The weather service first issued a high wind watch for Yakutat on Friday, warning of gusts to 60 mph, property damage and power outages, and telling residents to secure boats and anything loose outdoors. By Sunday it had downgraded that to an advisory with high confidence in gusts of 40 to 50 mph.

The rain was the steadier part. A weather statement for Yakutat and other Panhandle communities called for 1.5 to 3 inches every 24 hours through the weekend, and up to 4 inches near Yakutat and the gulf coast.