Marine Weather and Tide Forecast for Halibut Cove, AK

.SHORT TERM FORECAST SOUTHWEST ALASKA/BERING SEA/ALEUTIANS (Days 1 through 3)...

As of 5AM, current satellite imagery shows a large and occluded Bering low near Saint Matthew Island, which is slowly drifting eastward with time. In the wake of the low, westerly to southwesterly small craft winds are rounding the southern periphery for the southern Bering Sea and Aleutian Chain.
Alongside the breezy conditions, waves of convective showers are moving across the Bering Sea, Aleutians, Bristol Bay region, and Kuskokwim Delta. With cloud cover locked in and showers pivoting across Southwest Alaska, temperatures this morning are generally in the upper 30s to lower 40s. Daytime high temperatures will largely depend on how quickly clouds try to scatter later this afternoon, but there is medium to high confidence (60 to 70 percent) that clouds linger for much of the day, which will keep temperatures in the mid to upper 40s for much of Southwest Alaska.
With the Bering low only slowly moving eastward towards the Norton Sound through the near term period, there is high confidence (80 to 90 percent) that tomorrow's forecast will be very similar to today's forecast. Conditions will remain breezy with areas of small crafts across the Bering/Aleutians and the cloudy and the convective showery regime will continue through Monday afternoon.

Starting early next week, the pattern begins to progress as a much more robust shortwave reaches the Western Aleutians Monday afternoon and the stagnant troughing breaks down over the region.
As this shortwave drives south across the western Bering, increasing small craft winds and potentially gale-force gusts spread across the Aleutians from approximately Shemya to Adak. The signal in the models is that this wave amplifies, but digs well south thereafter over the North Pacific while ridging nudges into the western Bering. Southwest Alaska slowly trends cooler through the end of the short term, with overnight lows dropping to near freezing Tuesday morning area wide as both cloud cover and precipitation chances decrease. Attention then shifts to the south Wednesday morning as the remnants of a tropical system begins to emerge northward from the North Pacific. The primary forecast challenge with this system will be its track/strength and how close it comes in proximity to the Alaska Peninsula, but the yesterday evening's and last night's deterministic runs from the global models suggest the system turns more eastward and heads into the Gulf. Nevertheless, the current GFS/NAM both show a system with gale force winds and potentially areas of storm force winds at least coming close to the Alaska Peninsula. The other thing to watch will be if the aforementioned shortwave interacts with this system to deepen the low. Stay tuned.

.LONG TERM FORECAST (Days 4 through 7)...

The long term forecast starts off with a strong low in the North Pacific tracking south of the Alaska Peninsula. The low will bring strong northerly gap winds in the Unalaska and Alaska Peninsula starting Wednesday. The winds will be further enhanced by cold air advection. As the low tracks into the Gulf of Alaska on Thursday, strong easterly winds impact Kodiak and the gap regions around the island. A barrier jet may also set up along the Southcentral Coast. The strength of these winds will depend of the track and strength of the low, which are somewhat uncertain at this point.
Rain and snow at higher elevations will push into Southwest and coastal Southcentral Alaska with this low. Friday sees the low weaken as it continues its track eastward. Wind speeds will diminish in both Southwest and Southcentral Alaska as the low moves east and weakens. Rain and snow will become more scattered as well. Meanwhile, ridging develops over the Bering, leading to calmer winds and potentially low stratus or fog. Saturday sees the remnants of Koguma and Nolo potentially merge with the low, leading to an increase in rainfall and winds, but this will be mostly east of Southcentral towards the Juneau area. There is still plenty of uncertainty with these scenarios, so the forecast will be clarified as time progresses.

-JAR

AVIATION

PANC...Upper level waves moving over the terminal will bring a return of gusty southeasterly to southerly winds, as well as frequent rain showers, through this evening. Given models' timing and placement differences with the weak waves moving through, confidence is low with the timing of rain showers. Still, current thinking is that showers will prevail through much of the day, with a period of lower rain chances (about 40 to 50 percent) in late morning/early afternoon between two distinct waves. Ceilings will likely be predominantly MVFR through tomorrow morning, with improvements to VFR (but still below 5000 ft) between rounds of rain showers.