Southeast Alaska Drought

Although southeast Alaska is one of the wettest areas in North America, it was plagued by a long-lived drought from October 2016 to December 2019. “Extreme drought” was declared by the U.S. Drought Monitor in summer 2019. This designation, based on intensity and impacts, is a national rating.

The drought intensified in late 2017 garnering significant attention in Alaska as water restrictions and reservoir levels were too low for hydropower generation to meet capacity. Over the following 18 months, the drought waxed and waned with additional impacts, especially during the hot summer of 2019. This coincided with increasing national interest in Alaska drought, with a workshop sponsored by the USDA Northwest Climate Hub held in May 2019 in Juneau.

When normal levels of rain returned in autumn 2019, ACCAP started a comprehensive review of drought to help serve as a reference of what happened for Tribes, communities and agencies. Early in this process, Britt Parker with National Integrated Drought Information System approached Rick Thoman at ACCAP about collaborating on the drought project. Soon they were joined by Andy Hoell from the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. These groups partnered to create the Southeast Alaska Drought project which studied the droughtcauses, impacts and the likelihood of future droughts like it.

This final report provides easy to access information on:

• Weather and climate during the 2016-2019 drought in a temperate rainforest

• Temporal and spatial variability of the drought

• Wide array of observed impacts to society and the ecosystem