Marine Weather and Tide Forecast for Whale Pass, AK

FXAK67 PAJK 170009 AFDAJK

Southeast Alaska Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Juneau AK 409 PM AKDT Mon Mar 16 2026

SHORT TERM
/Through Tuesday Night/ An active and difficult forecast continues across SEAK through mid week. The panhandle is currently split into 2 regimes due to passing front with convective snow showers ongoing from Sitka to Angoon to Juneau with rain ongoing from Kake southward to Ketchikan. Main impacts through the short term forecast will remain confined across the northern and central panhandle as a low parks itself in the northern Gulf of Alaska through at least mid week, sending persistent waves of snow showers across the Icy Strait corridor northward, including Yakutat. These snow showers will continue to be scattered and potentially numerous in nature, producing widely variable accumulations over short distances.
Through tonight, progging a more organized band of showers will push into portions of the northern and central panhandle by Tuesday morning with snowfall accumulations near 3 to 6 inches for Gustavus, Juneau, Hoonah, Pelican and Sitka. Winter Weather Advisories have been issued with this incoming wave through Tuesday afternoon. Given the variable hit or miss nature of how these showers have been behaving, the Winter Weather Advisories could be upgraded to Winter Storm Warnings if heavier snow showers train over the same area. Moving through Tuesday night, no major changes are expected, scattered to numerous snow showers will continue to spread from SW to NE as upper lvl shortwaves rotate around the periphery of the low in the Gulf.


LONG TERM
/Wednesday through Friday/ A low pressure system situated in the northern gulf will continue to send showers across the gulf and into SE AK. These showers are most likely to be all snow with times of a rain/snow mix over the central to southern panhandle. Precipitation will remain as snow due to a ridge over the Bering. This ridge, along with the low pressure system, will push northerly flow with cold air into the gulf and then into the panhandle. This cold air moving over warmer ocean temperatures will help to create a very unstable environment, in turn giving us our snow showers. Heaviest snow showers are anticipated to be located over the northeast gulf coast with more uncertainly on specific snow accumulations. Looking at probabilities, there is around a 60 to 70% chance that areas along the coast, from Baranof Island and northward, could see around 5 to 8 inches of snow in 24 hours. This will highly be dependent on day time high temperatures. Warmer temperatures can quickly reduce snow ratios in turn lowering snow accumulations. Higher temperatures will also allow for times of a rain/snow mix, with heavier bursts of precip allowing all snow to push down to the surface. For the northern panhandle, confidence is a lot higher that temperatures will stay below freezing allowing all precipitation to fall as snow.
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