192
FXAK67 PAJK 032156
AFDAJK

Southeast Alaska Forecast Discussion
National Weather Service Juneau AK
156 PM AKDT Thu Jul 3 2025

.SHORT TERM...Short term forecast heading into the holiday weekend
remains on track with low cloud cover starting to thin out over the
southern and central panhandle through this afternoon but still hang
on along the Icy Strait corridor. Weak anticyclonic flow can be
seen in satellite imagery of cumulus clouds that have popped up at
higher elevations along Baranof Island and Admiralty Island,
essentially filling the void left by the dissipating stratus
layer in those areas. The best chance for continued clearing skies
will be over the inner channels, as drier air aloft tries to make
take center stage. Overnight Thursday into Friday most areas in
the central panhandle will still have enough moisture in the low
levels to see fog development, as winds remain relatively light
and variable and afternoon cumulus cloud cover diminishes.

For the 4th of July holiday, cloud cover looks to diminish further
across a majority of the panhandle as the ridge continues to push
in with even lower chances for any afternoon showers to produce
measurable precipitation. The lone exception will be Skagway and
the Klondike Highway as chances have increased for convective showers
from a trough moving down from the Yukon to make their way over
the town Friday evening. Coming from the interior though, these
showers will have fairly high cloud decks, and depending on the
stage of their development, could end up having little rain
actually making it to the surface.

.LONG TERM...Key messages:
- A drier trend is expected this weekend with times of light showers
  still expected.
- Temperatures slightly increase into the weekend.
- Weak trough to skirt the far southern panhandle Saturday
- The next low pressure system enters the gulf at the start of next
  week.
- Unseasonable heavy rain for far southern panhandle Monday into
  Tuesday.

Details: Precipitation chances diminish into the weekend as an area
of weak surface high pressure remains over the eastern Gulf of
Alaska. Even with diminishing precipitation chances, that does not
mean that the panhandle will remain completely dry. Isolated
showers remain possible across the panhandle in the afternoon
hours. However, minimum QPF is expected with no impacts. Along
with light showers, an upper level trough will continue to bring
increased cloud cover with broken to overcast skies. Temperatures
at the end of the week begin to return to near typical values for
this time of year with maximum temperatures in the mid to high
60s. Low temperatures will remain in the low to mid 50s to end out
the week.

Toward the end of the weekend, a low will slide into the northwest
gulf and a trough extending from it will bring a shift to more
southerly flow over the panhandle and increasing precipitation
rates. The heaviest precipitation currently looks to be more
focused on the northern panhandle than the central and southern
areas for Sunday. Another system will move into the southern gulf
early next week bringing widespread moderate to heavy rain. Some
model discrepancies still exist with the placement of this
feature, however models continue to trend towards winds increasing
along the eastern gulf to fresh to strong breezes by Tuesday.
Ensemble trends have begun to show a signal for heavy rain with
this early week system impacting the far southern panhandle from a .
The EFI has trended towards increasing SoT near 2 for QPF for the
far southern panhandle, with more than 80% members, for the 24 hr
period from Monday afternoon through Tuesday afternoon. The track
of the plume of moisture responsible for producing this heavy
rain will be the primary forecast challenge heading into the next
work week. With continued model spread for this low pressure
system just under a week away, we will continue to monitor it`s
development.

&&

.AVIATION...A bit of a pattern transition today becoming a bit
more prevalent tomorrow as weak ridging sets up across SE Alaska
and subsidence results in less rain and low ceilings. We still
will have to contend with areas of lower ceilings and potential
visibilities tonight where we will see some reformation of low
clouds and some fog. The main area for IFR/LIFR with fog
production tonight looks to be around the Juneau, Angoon, and
Petersburg regions. Elsewhere mostly MVFR overnight and especially
tomorrow with most locations seeing VFR by the afternoon hours.

&&

.MARINE...Inside Waters: Generally low winds of 10 kt or less for
most areas this afternoon. The only exception to that is in Taiya
Inlet, but it is not much higher, only blowing 15 kt out of the
south there. These lower wind conditions are expected to continue
for the next few days with some possible localized increases to 15
to 20 kt or so in the afternoons and evenings due to sea breeze
circulations. Waves will also be rather low with mainly 3 ft or
less wind wave through the weekend and little contribution from
swell near ocean entrances. Next more intense storm is more toward
Monday night into Tuesday with 15 to 25 kt winds possible for
mainly the southern inner channels.

.Outside Waters: Highest winds of 15 to 20 kt remain stationed in
the central gulf this afternoon. While seas remain rather low
with the highest being 4 ft seas for the near shore waters and 6
ft in the central gulf. There is also a small SW swell of 3 ft at
9 sec observed as well. This pattern is not going to change all
that much through the early weekend. It is into Sunday and early
next week that we start to see some changes. First the trough over
the central and southern gulf will drift north on Sunday to bring
some 15 to 20 kt SE winds and seas to 5 ft to the northern near
shore waters. That is followed by a stronger system on Monday
night into Tuesday that will bring 20 to 30 kt winds and seas up
to 8 ft for the SE gulf. Most of those seas will be wind wave as
the southerly swell will still only be around 2 to 3 ft through
the period.

&&

.AJK WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES...
PUBLIC...None.
MARINE...None.

&&

$$

SHORT TERM...STJ
LONG TERM....STJ
AVIATION...JG
MARINE...EAL

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