NWS Juneau: Heavy Rain and Strong Winds Thursday | October 14th, 2026

Good afternoon, Southeast Alaska. I'm meteorologist Zoe Kaplan, and I'm here to talk to you about the strong front that we have moving in starting Wednesday night, but mainly impacting the Panhandle Thursday and into Friday morning. So we have this low in the western Gulf that's sending a strong front up directly into the Panhandle, and that's going to bring a lot of moisture with it. And so we're expecting heavy rainfall starting late Wednesday night for the far southern Panhandle and moving north to northeastward into the rest of the Panhandle through Thursday morning, and that will continue into Friday morning. So flood watches have been issued for this time frame for parts of the southern and central Panhandle.

And we are also expecting some strong wind with this system, so 25 to 40 miles per hour sustained winds anticipated across much of the Panhandle, with winds in some of our stronger areas around Clarence Strait and out Icy Strait corridor and Cross Sound expecting closer to 45 miles per hour, with gusts up to 50 miles per hour expected for some of these land areas. So wind advisories have also, also been issued for parts of the southern Panhandle. And this is also indicating the possibility of isolated landslides for parts of the southern Panhandle. So stay tuned with our forecast for updates on this. This is our flood watch that we have issued, and it's reflecting the amount of, of rainfall that we are expecting for parts of the southern and central Panhandle.

We are still expecting a lot of rainfall for the northern Panhandle, but it will be not nearly as much and not as concerning of an amount for the rivers and streams and everything. And so we are expecting this heavy rainfall from, uh, on Thursday morning around 6 AM to 10 AM timeframe, and that is going to persist into the evening, but that is the timeframe of the heaviest rainfall that we're expecting. And these rain rates could exceed 0.3 inches per hour during this timeframe. And this is our wind advisory that we have out. This is for much of the southern Panhandle as well as for Juneau and parts of the outer coast.

And this is also why we have been looking into the possibility of isolated landslides, and so we will continue messaging this possibility as we as we get closer to the event and we learn a little more. And so you can continue to check back at our forecast at weather.gov/juno, and we will try to update you within, within the next few hours. Thank you. Have a good one.