Anchorage tied its record Friday for most consecutive days with at least a trace of rainfall, according to the National Weather Service.
As of 4 p.m., the service had recorded .02 inches at its station in Sand Lake -- enough to tally the 27th consecutive day with at least a trace of precipitation, said forecaster Neil Murakami. That ties the record set in 1951, according to the weather service.
The weather service was calling for showers tapering off to cloudy skies overnight, so it wasn't known if the record would be broken Saturday.
"It does look like things should get a little bit better," Murakami said. "We've got a chance."
The summer has been one of the coldest, gloomiest and wettest on record for Southcentral Alaska because of a persistent low-pressure system that has been stagnant over the Bering Sea since early June, according to the service.
According to weather service numbers, the period from June 1 through Aug. 11 this year had an average high of 62 degrees, the 10th lowest on record. The normal high for the period is 64.3 degrees.
The weather service recorded 5.98 inches of rain in Anchorage between June 1 and Aug. 11, ranking the period as the sixth-wettest on record. Anchorage normally gets 3.54 inches of rain in that period; the record is 7.89 inches in 1958.
The weather service says this "summer" is following a similar pattern to the summer of 2008, which had an average high temperature of 60.6 from June 1 through Aug. 11 and was the second-coldest on record.
The summer of 2008 also was very wet -- it had two long stretches of consecutive days with traces of rain, one for 24 days straight and the other for 23.
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By JAMES HALPIN
jhalpin@adn.com