Greetings from Alaska!
These pictures were shot on a hike this past Monday (July 3, 2006) through Portage Pass—which sits about 40 miles southeast of Anchorage and adjacent to the Portage Glacier. The weather was beautiful during this hike with my friend and meteorological colleague Tom MacPhail, who's currently an aviation forecaster at the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Anchorage and a long-time Alaska resident. Portage Pass can be home to some of south-central Alaska's most volatile weather, including driving rains and channeled high winds (70+ m.p.h.) and blinding, often horizontally-falling winter snows. Pilots use the pass frequently, but do so with a careful eye toward the weather. Though the weather was beautiful on this hike, a marine-layer overcast shrouded Whittier on the Prince William Sound side of the pass from sunny skies to the east. Terrain drives many weather changes in Alaska and the sharp weather shift on this relatively short hike was quite fascinating! Portage Pass sits between the port town of Whittier on Prince William Sound and the Turnagain Arm, an inlet off Cook Inlet that hosts "boar" tides—visible as a single wave sweeping up the inlet which can reach 12 feet in height on occasion when winds are just right—and which boasts the largest North American tidal swings (as much as 35 feet from high tide to low tide) outside Canada's famous Bay of Fundy. Turnagain Arm, known to channel its own powerful winds, extends some 45 miles from its source at Anchorage on the Cook Inlet.
--Tom Skilling
Photos: Courtesy Tom MacPhail:
