56.3917°N -134.6564°WPort 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 Little Port Walter had a small community at one time but has been replaced by a research station that studies the life cycles of several species of salmon.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]
Little Port Walter has an oceanic climate (Köppen Cfb) that borders a subpolar oceanic climate (Cfc), with only four months having average temperatures above 50F. It receives an average annual precipitation of over 226-2NaN-2[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 1inches of rain and/or snowfall per year,[5] while in October 1974 69.23inches of rain fell and in January 1985 61.67inches. The record daily precipitation was 14.84inches on 6 December 1964. The driest month was February 1989 with 0.63inches, while the hottest day on record was August 12 of 1990 with 88F and the coldest January 2 of 1966 with 0F overnight. The heaviest snowfall in a month was 94.22NaN2 in December 2001.
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."[6] It has not reported again on the census, and was later annexed into Sitka.