Ketchikan Weather: Rain, Temperature, Month by Month

The number sounds apocalyptic. Annual precipitation of 149.54 inches (3,798 mm) is several times what most American cities see, and it is the figure behind the wettest-town reputation. What the number hides is how the rain arrives. In a climate like this the moisture usually comes as light drizzle that carries on for hours, not as a violent downpour that ends the day. You will get damp before you get soaked.

The town is engineered for it. Boardwalks, covered walkways, awnings and doors that open straight into overhangs exist because the rain is constant, not because it is dramatic. Walking Creek Street in a shower is a normal local activity, not a misfortune.

Three practical rules follow from the climate. First, a hooded shell beats an umbrella. Wind funnels along the waterfront and through the streets, and umbrellas turn inside out. A hood leaves both hands free. Second, bring footwear that can get wet and dry overnight. Sneakers and canvas shoes stay damp for days in this humidity.

Third, know your dry stops before the heavy band arrives. The Southeast Alaska Discovery Center sits at 50 Main Street, minutes from the docks, with entry at $5.00 per person from May through September and children 15 and under free with an adult. It is free from October through April. Most of the things to do in town are indoors or covered, so a wet day changes your route, not your trip.

Most visitors assume the rainiest stretch is the middle of winter. The NOAA 1991-2020 normals say otherwise. October is the wettest month at 18.37 inches (467 mm), followed by November at 17.07 inches. June is the driest month at 7.02 inches (178 mm), with July close behind at 7.33 inches. The wet season is autumn, not deep winter.

Now line that up with the cruise calendar. The cruise season runs roughly May through September, with the peak in June through August. That means the season sits almost exactly on the driest part of the year, and the wettest months arrive after most ships have stopped calling. Visitors get the favorable end of the pattern without planning for it.

It still matters for choosing a month. June and July offer the lightest rain totals of the year along with the longest daylight. May and September take modestly more rain but bring fewer ships in port. October has the heaviest rainfall of any month, so a cruise call that late is the one itinerary where the weather odds genuinely worsen.

Our full best time to visit page weighs rain against daylight, crowds and wildlife timing. The short version for weather alone is this: aim for June, accept September, and pack seriously if you travel in October.

Decide on the outer layer first. In wind that funnels off the waterfront, a hooded waterproof shell is the only jacket that works all day. Umbrellas fail. Fleece alone soaks through. A shell with a real hood and taped seams covers you from the docks to the trailhead.

Decide on layers next. The annual mean temperature is 46.0°F (7.8°C), and even August averages only 59.0°F (15.0°C). That is not warm. Wear a midlayer you can pull on and off as you move between covered and open sections, because the temperature swings more with wind and cloud than with time of day.

Decide on footwear as a drying problem, not a style problem. Shoes will get wet. Pick something that dries overnight and grip well on wet boardwalk. Leave suede, canvas and thin-soled shoes behind.

Then add for the trip you booked. Boat and floatplane trips into Misty Fjords run on the water, where wind and spray drop the effective temperature well below the town figure. Bring a warm hat and gloves even in July, wear the shell as your top layer, and pack sunglasses, because the same sky that produces drizzle also produces sudden bright gaps. Dark windows help wildlife spotting, so skip pure white where you can. Every operator listing on our tour catalogue assumes you already dressed for rain.

Winter in Ketchikan is cold, dark and wet, but not snowy in the way the interior of Alaska is. The official climate normals give January as the coldest month at an average of 35.6°F (2.0°C), with December close behind at 36.4°F (2.4°C). Those are averages hovering just above freezing, which is why precipitation falls largely as rain rather than snow for much of the winter. What the published normals we checked do not state is a monthly snowfall figure, average snow depth or the number of snowy days, so we cannot print those.

Daylight is short. The normals record January as the coldest month but say nothing about sunrise and sunset times, and we will not guess at them.

What stays open changes too. The Southeast Alaska Discovery Center is free from October through April. The Totem Heritage Center runs reduced hours, 1:00pm-5:00pm Monday through Friday from October through April, against daily openings in summer. Several seasonal attractions and tour operators pause entirely until the ships return.

There is one genuine winter advantage. The combined city and borough sales tax drops from 8.0% to 5.5% from October 1 through March 31, so everything you buy in the off season costs less at the register. Our costs page breaks the tax down.

Tourism blogs and marketing copy regularly mention a "Liquid Sunshine Gauge" in downtown Ketchikan, a novelty rain gauge that measures the town's famous rainfall for passing visitors. It appears in enough articles that many people arrive looking for it.

We checked for it. During this review we looked at the City of Ketchikan's pages, Ketchikan Gateway Borough pages, National Weather Service material and Visit Ketchikan, the destination marketing organization. No official public page on any of those sources mentions a rain gauge by that name or describes one downtown. The name surfaces in blog and tourism-marketing contexts only.

Because of that, we do not print it as a sight, we do not give it an address, and we do not list it among the town's attractions. It may well exist as a private or informal display. Nothing we can verify says so, and a guide that repeats marketing claims without an official source is not doing its job.

If photographing a rain gauge is on your list, treat it as unconfirmed and plan your day around the stops we can verify instead. The town's rain is real regardless, and the numbers on this page come straight from the National Weather Service and NOAA.