Port Snettisham, Speel River

Port Snettisham, Speel River

by | Jul 1, 2020

Port Snettisham is an estuary that trends southwest for 9 miles (14.5 km) from Speel Arm to Stephens Passage at the north end of the Snettisham Peninsula, about 95 miles (153 km) northeast of Sitka and 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Juneau, Alaska. The bay was discovered by Lieutenant Joseph Whidbey, of the Royal Navy, on August 12, 1794, and named by Captain George Vancouver for a town in Norfolk, England.

At the head of Port Snettisham is Speel Arm and the mouth of the Speel River. The river was named in 1888 by Lieutenant Commander C.M. Thomas, of the U.S. Navy. This is the location of the Snettisham hydroelectric project.

The power plant is fed by two lakes that are tapped from below, negating the need for a traditional dam. The facility is managed by Alaska Electric Light & Power. Snettisham Airport is a publicly owned, private-use aircraft facility also managed by Alaska Electric Light & Power. Read more here and here. Explore more of Port Snettisham here:

About the background graphic

This ‘warming stripe’ graphic is a visual representation of the change in global temperature from 1850 (top) to 2021 (bottom). Each stripe represents the average global temperature for one year. The average temperature from 1971-2000 is set as the boundary between blue and red. The color scale goes from -0.7°C to +0.7°C. The data are from the UK Met Office HadCRUT4.6 dataset. 

Credit: Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading). Click here for more information about the #warmingstripes.

Please report any errors here

error: Content is protected !!