Port Walter

Coordinates: 56°23′30″N 134°39′23″W / 56.39167°N 134.65639°W / 56.39167; -134.65639 Port Walter is located on the southeastern side of Baranof Island in Sitka City and Borough, Alaska. It is made up of two parts: Little Port Walter and Big Port Walter.

Little Port Walter was the home of a herring saltery during the turn on the century and the ruins can still be seen. Little Port Walter had a small community at one time but has been replaced by a research station that studies the life cycles of several species of Salmon. There is a staff of 3–15 state and federal employees running the research station year-round. There is a dock, and the harbor itself is a safe anchorage. ^{[1] [2]}

Climate[]

Little Port Walter has an oceanic climate (Köppen Cfb) that borders a subpolar oceanic climate (Cfc), with only four months having average temperatures above 50 °F or 10 °C. It receives an average annual precipitation of over 226 inches or 5,700 millimetres^[3][4] and as such is the wettest permanent settlement in the United States and among the wettest in the world with lengthy climate records. As many as seventy-eight days per year see over 1 in (25 mm) of rain and/or snowfall per year,^[5] while in October 1974 69.23 in (1,758.4 mm) of rain fell and in January 1985 61.67 in (1,566.4 mm). The record daily precipitation was 14.84 in (376.9 mm) on 6 December 1964. The driest month was February 1989 with 0.63 in (16.0 mm), while the hottest day on record was August 12 of 1990 with 88 °F (31.1 °C) and the coldest January 2 of 1966 with 0 °F (−17.8 °C) overnight. The heaviest snowfall in a month was 94.2 in (2.39 m) in December 2001.

Demographics[]

Port Walter appeared once on the 1940 U.S. Census as an unincorporated village of 21 residents. This was actually referring to "Big Port Walter."^[9] It has not reported again on the census, and was later annexed into Sitka.

References[]

External links[]

• "Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)". United States of America, Geological Survey.