When it rains, it snows – precipitation changes across Alaska

The end of 2025 will remain fresh in Juneauʼs collective memory as historic amounts of snow fell across the town, blanketing rooftops, boats and roadways, disrupting everyday life and making national news. A few days later, the town readied themselves for an onslaught of rain, prompting a verbal disaster declaration from the governor – his fourth weather-related disaster declaration in three months.

Just one year before, however, Alaska’s weather also made national headlines, this time for lack of snow, as even by March, there was not enough snow in the Anchorage area to host the start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

Anchorage and Juneau are over 500 miles apart and subject to distinct climates, but these snowfall extremes, along with others across the state, give us a glimpse at statewide precipitation changes and how we can prepare.

“Itʼs important to understand that extreme weather can happen at any time, even under what we’d call a normal climate,” said Rick Lader, an atmospheric scientist with the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center. “What you can do is pay attention to the trends.”

Lader helped write the precipitation section of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic Report Card, a report published each year to document scientific consensus on Arctic trends. In 2024, precipitation reached a record high, continuing the observed pattern of increasing precipitation across the Arctic.

The storms in Juneau and across Alaska are also indicative of “an intensifying water cycle,” which causes these extreme events. Not only is there more rain and snow, but a large portion of the increase is falling in these anomalous events, putting strain on populations and infrastructure that were built for the old “normal.”

Another record broken

December in Juneau is typically cold and wet. Residents take advantage of the short days and the slow season when the summer cruise ships are no longer sounding their horns at the dock or offloading thousands of passengers. Juneau also gets a break from the rain when the droplets turn to heavy snow. Residents take to the ski trails, to the frozen lakes or up into the mountains to ski at Eaglecrest, the city-owned ski area. But in 2025, as the new year approached, the town was coming out of a deep freeze and woke to dense flakes falling from the sky.

Coined by local residents as a “snowpocalypse” or “snowmageddon,” the storm dropped a historic amount of snow in a short amount of time, breaking the previous 5-day record set in 1963. At the Juneau airport, 49 inches of snow fell over the course of five days. Other areas of Southeast Alaska received even more, with reports of 79 inches near Haines and 55 inches in Gustavus.

Residents of these areas shoveled and shoveled to free their cars or leave their houses, receiving only brief breaks in the snowfall between when the snow started on Dec. 27 and ended on New Year’s Eve.

Merry Ellefson watched snow pile on her roof while her husband was away on the University of Alaska Fairbanks Research Vessel Sikuliaq’s expedition to Antarctica.

“I was shoveling every three hours just to get the pathway out to the car, and then at a certain point I thought, I’m going to need some help here,” she said.

As a ski and running coach, Ellefson called in some favors from her previous athletes.

“I have to start with a lot of gratitude,” Ellefson said. “People brought food, people brought their brute strength. They brought their shovels to help everybody get it done, then checked in on others. You had to keep checking in to make sure everyone was okay.”

Like Ellefson, others in town were overwhelmed by the snow. Roofs collapsed and a snow removal team had to be flown in from Anchorage for some commercial properties. Many residents relied on friends and neighbors. Those without a support system or the means to remove snow themselves were left to hope their homes could stand the weight.

Annika Ord, a climate adaptation catalyst with the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center, is one of Ellefsonʼs previous athletes.

“It was a vigorous couple of weeks,” said Ord, who helped shovel the Ellefsons’ roof and her parents’ roof.

Ord was also staying on top of snow removal on her sailboat and her family’s commercial fishing boat docked in the Juneau Harbors, where over the course of the storm eight boats sank under the weight of the snow.

“I probably shoveled my boat like four times,” said Ord. “And we got looped into shoveling boats of people who were out of town.”

Ord said the need for snow removal seemed endless.

“Cars would be stuck, and you would just pull over on the side of the road to help people,” she said. “Early on, not everyone was prepared with shovels. I helped out a couple who were trying to dig their car out of a berm with only their hands.”

At the end of the long week of snow, temperatures began to warm, but the precipitation did not let up. Just a week after the record-breaking snow stopped, Juneau was hit by an atmospheric river – a long band of warm air that carries high levels of moisture. The atmospheric river brought more snow and heavy rain, causing flooding across Juneau as the large piles of snow melted and strained the frozen drainage system. The heavy snow and rain also prompted avalanche and landslide warnings across Southeast Alaska.

What falls from the sky

“When people think of Alaska’s changing environment, their first thought is likely related to increasing temperature; but, Alaska’s recent experiences should compel us to seriously consider the increasing risk of extreme precipitation,” wrote Alaska climate expert Rick Thoman in a commentary piece in the Alaska Beacon.

How Alaskans experience precipitation depends on whether it falls as rain or snow. In other parts of the state, as temperatures fluctuate, shorter snow seasons and mid-winter rain can wreak havoc on daily lives.

Winter rain is rare but increasing in the Interior. The winter rain, or rain-on-snow event, occurs when temperatures dip just above freezing or when a warm air pocket overlies cold air, causing rain to freeze instantly on contact with below-freezing surfaces like roads, snow, cars and vegetation.

Of 24 recorded events since 1920, half have occurred since 2000. Climate models predict a continued rise in winter rain, estimating an increase of one to three days per decade in Interior Alaska.

In January 2025, high temperatures in the Interior brought about a quarter inch of rain and a sheet of ice that stayed on the ground through April. Hazardous road conditions, vehicle collisions and a smattering of power outages reminded residents just how disruptive these events could be.

And in one of the most remarkable rain-on-snow events in the state’s history, in Fairbanks on Dec. 25, 2021, 9 inches of snow fell, covering the town in a pristine blanket. There were just a few hours of a beautiful white Christmas before 1.5 inches of rain fell on top of it.

Reports compiled by the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness document the far-reaching effects of this single event. Over 20,000 residents of Fairbanks, North Pole and Healy lost power, many for over 48 hours.

And over the following days, drivers called in 54 vehicle collisions and vehicles in distress. The ice sheet that covered the roads stayed through March.

In other areas of the state, where winter temperatures are not as consistently below freezing, winter rain means a shorter snow season. In the winter of 2024-2025, Anchorage had only 6 inches of snow on the ground by late February after earlier snowfalls had melted away. The 30-year average at Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage is 46 inches of snowfall accumulation for December through February.

Southcentral Alaska was not alone in feeling the impacts of warmer temperatures and shorter snow seasons as the state faced record winter warmth. In December, in the Nome area, nearly all precipitation fell as rain.

“January started out with ice glazed roads, brown tundra and no snow to be seen. Winter trails were non-existent and thoughts of skiing, dog mushing and traveling by snow mobile remained wishful thinking,” reported The Nome Nugget in their 2025 review.

Shared understanding

After the bulk of the snow had fallen across Juneau, and everyone was preparing for the rain to come, Merry Ellefson looked out across her yard. Seven trees had come down over the course of the storm and 15 morewere on their way. Later, as she skied along Montana Creek, she recounted hearing a booming crack as a tree with a 2-foot diameter trunk snapped in half.

“You couldn’t even see the trees through the snow on them. It was spectacular and eerie,” Ellefson said. “I had this realization, these trees have never been through this weather before either.”

As we move into unprecedented times, residents of Alaska, human or otherwise, will experience a new climate. Extreme events and anomalous weather will continue to arise, straining budgets, infrastructure, ecosystems and communities, but we have an idea of what’s coming. The trends point to more precipitation overall, but that can look different depending on the region and year. Expect shorter snow seasons, more rain, more extreme events and warmer winters.

“Knowing what the past has brought, that’s step one. Or maybe that’s step zero,” Thoman said. “We need to prepare for beyond that.”