Hot, dry summer season winds down for the Northern Valley

Talkeetna’s busy summer season is coming to a close. And it was a scorcher. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tabulated this summer as Talkeetna’s hottest and driest on record.

“It’s been a lot more sustained, I think, throughout the whole summer. It just never seems to let up.”

Graham Knapp owns and runs The Grove, a farm, lodging and event space in Talkeetna, with his wife Mindy. Keeping their crops watered and their animals cool became a herculean effort when temperatures hit the 90s.

“Probably the biggest impact it had was on our micro greens operation,” Knapp said. “They just stopped growing or turned into leather when it hit 90 degrees for a couple days there. So that was challenging, just had to keep watering every hour or two.”

The bouts of strong wind in mid-August that led to the rapid spread of the McKinley Fire also caused damage.

“This seemed to be the windiest I’ve seen it here, and we’d just gotten our attached greenhouse put up on the back of our barn, and it wasn’t quite all put together and tied in, and so when those winds came through, it just blew that attached greenhouse all over the place.”

The abnormally warm and dry weather was a boon for other area businesses, however. Air services boomed in July, as clear days stacked up and flight tour demand peaked.

“The weather was really nice, probably one of the best weather seasons in the years that I can remember, and I’ve been here quite some time,” said Heather Fish, office manager at Talkeetna Air Taxi.

Annie Duquette, the general manager, concurred. “The clients were there, passengers were there  – weather is an important thing, and that really cooperated with us this year. Other things came into play that caused us to be a little slow at times, but that was due to the fire. But other than that, things went really well.”

Fish and Duquette said it was a successful season despite some cancellations and limited flights during the worst of the McKinley Fire, and having to pause glacier landings for three weeks this August and September. 

“Most of the time we’re able to do landings, I would say 80 percent,” said Duquette. “This year obviously we had a lot more sun days that do melt down the glacier a little, so that was an issue, but now we’ve gotten the snow back again, so we have been doing glacier landings for the past week.”

Now that the tour buses, visitors and shop hours are all dwindling, Talkeetna is finally cooling off after the sweltering season. September has brought cooler temperatures and more than an inch of rain so far.