ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Gusty winds and heavy snow has begun to spread into Western and Southwest Alaska, with a surge of warmer air. Temperatures in Southwest Alaska is already 10 to 35 degrees warmer than yesterday morning. This warmth will spread across the rest of the state through the weekend, with some of the most pronounced warmth along the Slope. We’ll see many areas this weekend into next week remaining well-above average.
SOUTHCENTRAL:
Temperatures are slowly warming across Southcentral, with many areas seeing cloud coverage increasing. While we could see some peeks of sunshine today, most locations will see mostly cloudy conditions. While we can’t rule out light flurries for inland locations, most of the precipitation today will occur near the coast. Snow looks to be the primary precipitation type, although later this evening a transition to rain or wintry mix will occur. This comes as temperatures quickly warm across Southcentral.
We’ll see highs today in the upper 20s and lower 30s for inland areas, while coastal regions warm into the 30s and 40s. The southerly flow aloft will remain with us for several days, pumping in the warmth and moisture. As a result, Kodiak could see over an inch of rain today, with gusty winds.
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While most of the precipitation this weekend remains near the coast, inland areas will see the best chance for wintry mix Sunday into Monday. Little to no accumulation is expected.
The key takeaways for this weekend, is snow transitioning to rain, with some gusty winds likely for parts of Southcentral this weekend.
SOUTHEAST:
Another fairly quiet day is expected across Southeast today, outside of some light snow near Yakutat. We’ll see a mix of sun and clouds with temperatures remaining on the cooler side. Parts of the Northern Panhandle may stay in the upper 20s today. The stretch of quiet weather will stay with us through the first half of Saturday, followed by an increase in precipitation and winds. This upcoming system may bring some heavy snowfall to Southeast, so be prepared for that potential this weekend. Temperatures warm into next week, back into the upper 30s and lower 40s for many areas.
INTERIOR:
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While temperatures this morning have bottomed out as low as -30 near Fort Yukon, temperatures will warm into the weekend. A wind advisory for the Alaska Range goes into effect at 9 Friday morning, where winds up to 60 mph will warm the Interior. Temperatures today for many locations will warm into the single digits, with some of the greatest warming arriving Saturday through next week. It’s likely we’ll spend most of next week with temperatures in the 20s and 30s, with the warmest locations near the Alaska Range. While we will largely stay dry, there is a chance for some light snow arriving Sunday night into Monday.
SLOPE/WESTERN ALASKA:
Temperatures will remain slightly above average for parts of the Slope today, with warming winds to build into the Slope this weekend. This comes as our area of low pressure in the Bering Sea continues to move farther north. Be prepared for gusty easterly winds along the Slope, leading to blowing snow and reduced visibility. We’ll see temperatures quickly warm well above average, with highs climbing into the 20s and 30s along the Slope into next week. While some snow is possible through the weekend, the heaviest activity will occur for the Brooks Range. We’ll see the potential for 4 to 12 inches of snowfall, with the highest amounts occurring along the southern slopes of the Brooks Range near Kobuk Valley. Winds could gusts as high as 45 mph, leading to greatly reduced visibility.
Heavy snow is impacting Western and Southwest Alaska this morning, with winds gusting up to 50 mph. Numerous winter weather alerts, as well as a coastal flood advisory is in effect. The heaviest snow will fall for the Seward Peninsula and east of Norton Sound, where up to a foot or more of snow is to be expected. The heaviest amounts will fall today, with the activity set to lighten up through Sunday. In addition to the snow, gusty winds will lead to areas of blowing snow. Visibility could be reduced down to less than half a mile at times. As southerly flow continues to pump in warmth, we’ll see a transition from snow to rain later today into Saturday for parts of Southwest Alaska.
ALEUTIANS:
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Gusty winds and heavy rain will fall through the Aleutians today, where up to .75″ of rain is possible. As the area of low pressure moves north, we’ll see a new low form just south of the Eastern Aleutians. This will lead to additional rain and winds into the weekend. Winds could gusts upwards of 50 mph through the Eastern Aleutians and through the Alaska Peninsula. With ridging to our east, more rain and winds remain with us into early next week. There is the potential that the Pribilof Islands see a return to snow Sunday, as colder air moves into the Bering Sea.
OUTLOOK AHEAD:
Well above average warmth will stay with us as we close out January. While one more short-lived cold snap is possible, we may have to wait until February before we tap into warmer conditions. Temperatures through the close of January will keep average monthly temperatures 5 to 12 degrees above average for much of the state. The overall trend still favors a wetter pattern, although with warmer weather the southern parts of the state will favor more rain or a mixed bag of precipitation.
Have a wonderful and safe holiday weekend.
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Democratic former Representative Mary Peltola narrowly leads Republican Senator Dan Sullivan in Alaska’s 2026 U.S. Senate race, a potential shakeup in the fairly red state, according to a new poll.
Newsweek reached out to Peltola’s press team via email on Wednesday for comment.
Why It Matters
Democrats are facing a tough Senate map in the 2026 midterms. Even if President Donald Trump’s approval rating fuels a Democratic wave, the party still needs to win control of states that backed him by double digits in the 2024 election to win a majority.
But Peltola, the only Democrat to win statewide in recent years, may be able to make the race against Sullivan competitive. Alaska could become the state that decides control of the Senate in November.
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What To Know
Peltola represented Alaska’s at-large congressional district in the House, first winning a special election in 2022, defeating former Governor Sarah Palin to fill the late GOP Representative Don Young’s seat. She was elected to a full term later in 2022 and lost her reelection bid in 2024.
Peltola, who only recently announced her campaign for the Senate, raised $1.5 million in the first 24 hours of her bid.
An Alaska Survey Research poll conducted January 8-11, ahead of Peltola’s official announcement, showed her leading Sullivan by more than 1.5 percentage points. The poll found that 48 percent of participants back Peltola to 46.4 percent for Sullivan. About 5.6 percent of participants are undecided.
The survey of 2,132 Alaska adults, 1,988 of whom are registered to vote, also found that Peltola has a more positive rating than Sullivan, 46 percent to 39 percent. In terms of his job approval rating, 36 percent of participants approve of his work while 44.5 percent disapprove.
Nearly half of the poll’s participants, 46 percent, said they have no party affiliation, while 30 percent identify as Republican and 15.4 percent as Democrat. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
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What People Are Saying
Nate Adams, Sullivan’s campaign spokesperson, told Newsweek: “Senator Sullivan has spent years delivering real results for Alaska: historic investments in our state’s health care, major funding for our Coast Guard, helping protect those who can’t protect themselves and policies that are finally unleashing Alaska’s energy potential. Dan Sullivan delivers for Alaska, and that will be the focus of his campaign. Conversely, his opponent served a term and a half in Congress where she didn’t pass a single bill. Alaskans deserve a senator with a proven record of getting things done, and the contrast couldn’t be clearer in this race.”
Mary Peltola, in her campaign announcement: “My agenda for Alaska will always be fish, family, and freedom. But our future also depends on fixing the rigged system in DC that’s shutting down Alaska, while politicians feather their own nest. DC people will be pissed that I’m focusing on their self-dealing, and sharing what I’ve seen firsthand. They’re going to complain that I’m proposing term limits. But it’s time.”
Senator Dan Sullivan, on X on January 6: “I am so excited about 2026 and all of the opportunities ahead for our great state. The Alaska comeback is happening!”
Alaska Democratic Party Chair Eric Croft, in a statement: “Mary Peltola is our most steadfast champion and a strong voice for Alaskans in every region of our state…Mary has never been afraid to stand up to powerful special interests or her own party to put Alaskans first—and we can’t wait to elect her to represent us in the U.S. Senate this November.”
Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, on Alaska Public Media: “We’ve had a pretty solid team here in the Senate for the past 12 years, so we want to figure out how we’re going to keep in the majority. And Dan delivers that.”
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What Happens Next
Candidates will spend the coming months making their case to voters, as both parties try to win control of the Senate in the midterms. Sabato’s Crystal Ball rates the Alaska race “Leans Republican.”
Update 1/14/26, 3:43 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Sullivan’s campaign.
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City Manager for Juneau, Alaska, Katie Koester, joins FOX Weather to talk about how locals are handling the recent flood and avalanche threat and how emergency crews are prepared to handle impending situations.
HAINES, Alaska – An avalanche closed part of a highway in the borough of Haines, a small town about 90 miles north of Juneau in Alaska’s panhandle on Tuesday night — the latest debris slide in the region after days of heavy rain triggered avalanches in Juneau last week.
HOW TO WATCH FOX WEATHER
Barricades have been placed at Mile 10 of the Haines Highway and crews will begin to assess the damage during the daytime on Wednesday, Alaska Department of Transportation officials said.
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(Alaska Department of Transportation/Facebook / FOX Weather)
Earlier Tuesday, the department released a few photos of the highway’s condition and issued a travel advisory before the avalanche and reported that rain-on-ice conditions were making road conditions very difficult.
RECORD SNOW BURIES JUNEAU SCHOOL AND PROMPTS FIVE-DAY CLEANUP
Drivers were urged to stay off the road.
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Relentless rain from an atmospheric river has pounded the southeastern part of the state, which has begun to melt a historic amount of snow that fell across the region over the holidays, triggering days of avalanche warnings.
More than 7 feet of snow has fallen across the Alaska panhandle, with the bulk coming after Christmas Eve.
Evacuations were issued in Juneau last week after several large avalanches were reported on the Thane and Mount Juneau avalanche paths Friday.
Governor Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration on Saturday for both the ongoing storms and the record-shattering snow.
Another day of heavy rain is expected, but the precipitation will finally begin to decrease later Wednesday.
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Check back for more details on this developing story.
A Mini-PASS unit and explanatory posters are displayed on Aug. 10, 2021, at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium in Anchorage. ANTHC distributed hundreds of the units during the COVID-19 pandemic to homes in villages that lacked piped water. (Yereth Rosen / Alaska Beacon)
A key step to preventing the spread of diseases like COVID-19 or influenza is simple: washing hands. But lack of piped water in parts of rural Alaska has made that simple practice not so easy to carry out.
Now a technological innovation has boosted rural Alaskans’ ability to do that important disease-fighting task.
The Miniature Portable Alternative Sanitation System, or Mini-PASS, a portable water station that does not require connection to any piped water system, proved effective at helping people wash their hands properly, and there are signs that its use is fending off contagious diseases among children, according to a recently published study.
The Mini-PASS is a stripped-down version of the full Portable Alternative Sanitation System that was also designed by Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and its partners.
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The full PASS units typically store 50 to 100 gallons of water, and the units include connections to septic tanks, allowing for flush toilets to take the place of “honey buckets,” the plastic-bag-lined buckets commonly used in rural Alaska areas lacking water and sewer systems. The Mini-PASS units lack those septic connections, and they typically allow for storage of 20 gallons of water. Storage tanks are placed above sinks, and used water drains into collection buckets.
The Mini-PASS units are much cheaper than full PASS systems, costing a little over $10,000 for construction and delivery, according to ANTHC. A full PASS system can cost about $50,000 per household, according to ANTHC. That sum is vastly lower than the cost of extending piped water and sanitation service, which can total $400,000 or more per household in parts of rural Alaska.
Simplicity had its virtues during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, there was urgency for distributing Mini-PASS units to several rural communities — places where people living in unpiped homes were hauling water, often in difficult circumstances, then using and reusing it in germ-spreading basins.
The consortium, with the help of partners, distributed hundreds of Mini-PASS units to rural households during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. At least 350 units had been distributed as of 2021, and more have gone out since then.
“The idea was people were not going to be reusing the water, that it was free flowing, that you’d wash your hands, and then it would go into the wastewater bucket, the gray water bucket,” said Laura Eichelberger, an ANTHC research consultant and co-author of the study.
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“And because the pandemic was this urgent situation of crisis, they needed to get as many of these units in as they possibly could. And so they took the idea of the PASS and just made it as simple and cheap as possible,” she said.
The recent study used interviews to measure the effectiveness of mini-PASS. In all, there were 163 interviews from 52 households.
Water use is considered an indicator of public health, and the Mini-PASS units led to an increase in water use that expanded over time, the results found. Average water use per person increased by 0.08 gallons per month in households that used the units, meaning that after a year, water use was up by 0.96 gallons a day per person, or 3.6 liters per day, the results found.
Additionally, people with Mini-PASS units reported that children 12 and under had fewer symptoms of contagious diseases.
There was a “statistically significant decrease in the reported symptoms, respiratory in particular, for households who were actively using the Mini-PASS as their primary hand- washing method, compared to those that were still using wash basins,” said Amanda Hansen, the study’s lead author and another ANTHC health researcher.
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Prior to the distribution of Mini-PASS units, water use in unpiped villages in Alaska averaged only 5.7 liters per person per day, according to a 2021 study by researchers at Canada’s McGill University. That was well below the World Health Organization standard of 20 liters per person per day, according to that study.
Parts of rural Alaska continue to face daunting challenges in securing adequate water and sanitation services. According to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, more than 30 communities were considered “unserved” as of 2020. The category applied when less than 55% of homes are served by piped, septic and well or covered haul systems.
Still, there has been significant progress in recent years. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the number of rural Alaska homes without water, sewer or both has decreased by a notable 70% over the past two decades.
Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization that covers Alaska state government.
