It has been an expensive month as Alaska has gotten hit with it’s 3rd storm in as many weeks. Anchorage has received winds in excess of 100 mph each time. Each of the storms grew progressively worse as strong winds were followed by heavy rain. The “third one’s a charm” because the ground was saturated from the previous 2 and some pretty massive flooding has ensued. All of our clients are finally out of the field, but it was an interesting couple of days of flying. Alaska has it’s fair share of “drizzle” but all-out “rain” is a bit of oddity, especially 30+ hours of it. Fortunately the temperature was relatively warm or we would have had clients stuck in 6 feet of snow. Here are a couple of photos showing the flooding in our area.
Clients headed for the Super Cub, which is sitting on a small island, and totally off of the normal strip.
The clients watched me buzz around for 20 minutes looking for a place to land. I picked the largest gravel patch in the middle of the photo, there was only about 200 feet of dry ground.
Driving down the South Fork in a downpour.
Our runway after nearly 24 hours of rain.
A small stream we normally wade across is nearly a 1/4 mile wide.
The South Fork with more water in it than we have ever seen. Alaskan rivers are seldom wall to wall water. They are mostly gravel beds with a channel or two running through.
Ice Berg lake more full than we have ever seen it, and on the very brink of dumping which will cause even more flooding. See lake video here
Trying to figure out where I can takeoff with a load because the air strip was totally unusable.
There was so much water flying on takeoff it actually went up over the leading edge of the wings. Steam was rolling off the engine because of water coming through the engine cowl. I wish we had a video of it.