The Department of Transportation installed a weather station at the 2,000-foot level on the mountain ridge above 11-Mile Zimovia Highway. Construction was completed during the first week of August. The unit is the second station installed in the area of last year's devastating landslide.
The Alaska Department of Transportation installed a ridgetop weather station near 11-Mile earlier this month. The station will allow scientists and DOT officials to further monitor the area affected by the November 2023 landslides.
Standing 18 feet tall, the structure will report data such as air temperature, precipitation, wind speed and direction, and snow depth. Notably, it is the only snow depth monitor on the island other than the airport weather station, according to Pat Dryer, an avalanche and geohazard specialist for DOT.
Scientists are currently evaluating the initial data to make sure everything looks how it should. If the station is working well, the data will be made public by the end of August.
This new collection station is the state's most recent weather-monitoring installation in the wake of the November 2023 landslides, joining the first 11-Mile station that sits at 70 feet in elevation.
The new tower is one of the first ridgetop stations in Southeast and contains a myriad of modern monitoring methods. Atop the tower lies a small lidar (laser beam) sensor used to determine snow depth. The tower is completely solar powered and even has its own modem to transmit data through its omnidirectional cell antennae. The data logger is also stored on site within the tower.
While the station at 70 feet is reliant on Starlink and satellite communications, the new tower is completely self-sufficient.
The data will be compiled and available on a public website - https://bit.ly/4cIG1y4 - similar to the data from the other 11-Mile station. Officials and scientific teams, like the landslide experts who visited Wrangell earlier this month, will be able to access the data and monitor the area for risks of slides.
Getting the equipment 2,000 feet up the mountain was no easy task, according to Dryer.
A helicopter transported the materials for the structure, which resembles a small cell tower. According to Dryer, it took multiple trips to lower everything down from the helicopter onto the clearing below. The location was chosen in part because it would not require any additional clearing or working the land. All the department needed to do was to plant the tower, put the pieces together and anchor it down.
The station is rooted in a gravel foundation and secured by three stabilizing cables that will keep it upright during stormy weather. While there was some debate about whether the tower should have a gravel or a concrete foundation, the landscape and the restraints of helicopter transportation led the DOT to use gravel, Dryer said.
Once all the materials were dropped on top of the ridgetop, the team assembled the tower in just a couple of days.
"We want this tower to provide more data for scientists and for the National Weather Service," said Sam Dapcevich, spokesman for the department. "There is a lack of data in such a vast area. This is a step forward."
The main slide last Nov. 22 started at almost 1,500 feet in elevation, traveling about 3,750 feet to tidewater. A state report issued in February noted that the winds were stronger at higher elevation the night of the slide, but because there was no ridgetop data station on Wrangell Island, scientists had to rely on data that came from a wind gauge on Zarembo Island.
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