April...Showers?

MAT-SU — Valley residents were rudely awakened by the white stuff that had fallen on Wednesday morning, accumulating for the first time in weeks.

Warm weather had become a well-earned right of spring over the past few weeks, but snow accumulated as much as five inches in some places and up to 20 inches in Hatcher Pass.

While the snow may seem out of place, it’s not unusual to get snowfall in April. Louise Fode, warning coordination meteorologist for the Anchorage Weather Forecast Office, said that snow is still likely Thursday night and into Friday morning, and Valley residents could see an additional six inches of snowfall by Friday afternoon. The initial snowfall tapered off, but is followed by a low pressure system coming from the west. The low pressure system is expected to move up Cook Inlet and hit Anchorage before moving into the Valley.

“In April, because we’re kind of going through that transition period, we tend to get heavier wetter snows and that really makes a difference as to how much you see accumulate,” Fode said.

Fode said that April tends to be a dryer month by comparison, and that may be a reason why April is associated with showers and not snowfall.

“In Alaska in April, we get high pressure setting up over the state which means no precipitation. When that happens, usually we get warmer temperatures as well. It kind of marks that transition to spring. Depending on how long that sets up, it could make a difference whether we see rain or snow in April or not,” Fode said.

Fode said that temperatures are expected to remain low on Thursday prior to Friday morning’s predicted snowfall. April snowfall is far from irregular. In 2014, the latest snowfall recorded was on May 18.

“People are still used to kind of the nice weather that we had,” Fode said. “I think that if you want to count on good weather from the end of March through summer, that’s a pretty big favor to ask of mother nature.”

Contact Frontiersman reporter Tim Rockey at tim.rockey@frontiersman.com