Gulkana Weather Station Sputters Back To Life

Gulkana Weather Station Finally Operational After Almost A Week

Jackie Purcell at the Channel 2 weather map which was mistakenly showing a high temperature in the Copper Valley. for Monday, January 31 –  of 31 degrees below zero. Channel 2  gave that reading because the Gulkana Weather Station wasn't working.

Update Saturday, February 5: The National Weather Service Program Leader Kaitlyn O'Brien wrote to the Country Journal to explain that there was a delay in fixing the Gulkana weather site because it is owned and maintained by the FAA and they had to wait for the FAA to fix the equipment. She said it is "reporting consistently again."

Gulkana Airport Weather Stalls Out 
The Gulkana Airport weather station stopped recording any updated weather information on Wednesday, January 26th. It came back online, apparently (for good)  on Tuesday February 1st at 5 pm. 

Update 5 pm Tuesday, February 1: The Gulkana Airport is hopefully back online. After a balky startup, it began recording at 5 pm and has recorded observations every hour since. The high temperature at the airport on Tuesday was 11 below zero. 

Update: Tuesday morning the weather service was trying to get the station up and running after being contacted by the Country Journal,  but the readings were intermittent. The weather service was able to get two readings around midnight Monday, and then again at 9 am on Tuesday morning, February 1st, 2022 – then again at 11 am.

Until it came back online, if you wanted to know what the temperature really was, or the day's high and low temperatures, you had to listen to KCAM, which was the only reliable weather source for almost a week.
 
The temperature reading all day on Monday, January 31st at the Gulkana Airport was the same one recorded at 7 am that morning. This led Jackie Purcell, at Channel 2 News, to think that the Copper Valley's high temperature on Monday the 31st of January was -31 degrees.
 
It wasn't. The lengthening daylight is thankfully bringing some warmth back to the Copper Valley during the day.

Contacted by the Country Journal, the National Weather Service said Monday afternoon that it had been unaware of the problem and while talking to the Journal, they acknowledged they couldn't raise the station on their computer system. 

NOAA's Anchorage office said that if they hadn't been called it might have been several weeks before they realized there was a problem at the airport.