Storm causes major damage at Elfin Cove
- Daily Sitka Sentinel
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
By Anna Laffrey
Daily Sitka Sentinel
A low-pressure system hit Elfin Cove like a tornado around 10:30 a.m. Monday morning, causing serious damage to at least five residences, and cutting off the small town’s boardwalk and trail system, electrical infrastructure and water lines, as well as its Raven Radio transmitter station.
No injuries were reported from the storm, which centered on the steep eastern shore of the bay inside Elfin Cove, where landslides have come down in the past.
About 20 people are currently living in the northwest Chichagof Island community.
Before the storm front reached town on Monday, Elfin Cove resident Mary Jo Lord-Wild was gathering kelp in front of her home on the western shore of the bay.
“It was blowing 40 knots, but it was doable,” Lord-Wild told the Sentinel Monday. "And suddenly it increased to something like 70 or 80 knots.”
“Then you could hear the rocks starting to tumble down the hillside across the way, and hear the trees go down across the way,” Lord-Wild said. “You could stand here at our house and hear rocks coming down in three different areas, and splashes when they hit the water."
“I’ve lived here since 1972 and this is the biggest event I’ve seen,” Lord-Wild continued. “We’ve had winds like that before, but this is the most destructive I’ve seen.”
One of the landslides hit a power line or transformer, which began sparking when struck, Lord-Wild said.
Residents worked to shut off power, and later isolated the system to restore power downtown. Lord-Wild said those who live beyond the break in the system may be without power for a long time.
Cell service is still functioning, and many in the community have satellite internet access via StarLink, she said.
Debris impacted the community’s water line; residents isolated lines so the water tank wouldn’t drain.
A tree came down on the building that houses the transmitter station for Sitka public radio station KCAW-FM Raven Radio. The radio tower was hit and is leaning against the building, and debris damaged the dish that picks up Alaska Rural Communications System television broadcasts.
In Sitka KCAW station manager Mariana Robertson said today that the station is investigating stopgap fixes to restore Raven Radio service to Elfin Cove, but it may be off the air until the transmitter station is fixed.
Tyler Magart, who lives on the eastern shore of the bay, said today that the local disaster “felt like a normal storm, a normal September storm,” until she looked out the window and saw a neighbor struggling to tie up his boat.
“I was like, ‘what’s going on?’” Magart said. “Then I realized there was a tree down between our property and the neighbor’s property, it was in the water.” She’s vigilant when debris falls near her home, as landslides have come down in the area before.
“I told my husband, ‘We need to get out of here,’” Magart said. The couple left their home and ran towards “downtown,” where the post office and community center are located in front of the bay.
As they fled, trees began falling all around them, blocking the boardwalk in both directions, so the couple waited under an awning, yelling back and forth with neighbors, ensuring that others were safe.
She said a man fell in the water as he was trying to tie up his boat -- he may have been struck by a sign ripped from a dock. “He swam back to the dock under his own power, against the wind, and pulled himself up, which was a difficult task,” Magart said.
Magart’s neighbor, who is 82 years old, started heading towards her house. She said she’ll “never forget seeing him climbing over a root wad coming to see if we were all right.”
Magart, her husband and the neighbor decided to board the Magarts' boat. They motored out to the middle of the bay, where they waited out the storm, and began making a list of people in town to check on.
“Then the wind died down and we started to see all of the damages,” Magart said.
She said today that she counted six homes smashed by debris; some of them including multiple structures, and one that houses the town’s restaurant.
More properties were damaged, and the extent is still unknown, Magart said.
A representative of the Alaska Department of Transportation, as well as a state geologist, were set to arrive in Elfin Cove today to assess hazards and survey damages with a drone.
National Weather Service hydrologist Aaron Jacobs said today that the strong winds emerged from a “deepening low-pressure system that was moving into the northeast Gulf of Alaska and moved inland just over Cross Sound and Elfin Cove.”
As the system moved in, the Elfin Cove area saw east winds around 40 miles per hour, he said. “And as the low moved over the region right around 10 a.m. we saw a very strong wind shift to the southwest, and we saw sustained winds of 40 to 50 mph with gusts up to 70 mph,” Jacobs said.
The southeast quadrant of a low-pressure system can bring a weather feature called a “sting jet,” or “very intense winds driven from higher in the atmosphere down to the surface,” Jacobs said.
He said that a “sting jet” likely hit the Elfin Cove area, bringing "strong, anomalous winds for a short time.”
The high winds continued for about an hour, or until about 11 a.m., Jacobs said. The storm moved on over Cross Sound, Icy Strait and Glacier Bay, the meteorologist said.
Elfin Cove received about 2.46 inches of rain from noon Sunday through noon Monday, which is not unusual for the area.
The winds were extreme enough to uproot trees, trigger landslides, and snap trees, Jacobs said.
“It’s very steep terrain, especially where the land came down, and they don’t have a lot of soil, so it doesn’t take a lot,” Jacobs said. “I think the winds were the driving force in this event, the reason for a lot of treefall. … (Elfin Cove) is very exposed to westerlies, especially how intense those winds were.
“A friend who lives there said it was like a tornado, wind was swirling around in the cove,” Jacobs said.
He said another significant, deepening low-pressure system is expected to reach Southeast Alaska late this week into Friday.
“Right now it's expected to land somewhere between Sitka and Elfin Cove, and it doesn’t look like there is extreme precipitation associated with it,” Jacobs said.
The National Weather Service will be monitoring that front, Jacobs said.
• This story was originally published by the Daily Sitka Sentinel.
