The village is losing ground three times faster than it was 10 years ago, according to studies of Napakiak’s erosion. During high tide, the river is only 64 feet from the high-schoolers’ original classroom and gets closer by the day. On windy days, waves crash against the shore where students used to play, battering it until the land relents and crumbles.
Akiak City Administrator David Gilila says the village is in danger of becoming an island in the Kuskokwim River.
In Chefornak, a family was forced to evacuate their home because a sinkhole caused by thawing permafrost formed underneath it. That family had to move into a building intended to be a quarantine facility.
Kwigillingok, a community on the Bering Sea coast of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, is used to some flooding during high tides. But in recent years, that flooding has grown more severe, reaching a new threshold last week.
“It got very cold the day we got there, it got down to like single digits and ice came out of the mountains and rivers and sloughs everywhere,” said Allyn Long, general manager of Alaska Logistics.
A big winter storm came in from the Bering Sea and battered the Western Alaska coast from the evening of Nov. 25 through Nov. 26. Some communities, like Hooper Bay, have reported flooding.
The Kuskokwim River breakup has led to widespread flooding, affecting roads and drinking water in several communities, with Kwethluk experiencing significant impacts.
In villages like Kongiganak, communities have stopped burying their dead because, as the permafrost melts, the oldest part of their cemetery is sinking.
Communities along the lower Kuskokwim River and coastal areas in Western Alaska assess damage from recent storms, with flooding and erosion impacting homes and infrastructure, and a new storm potentially exacerbating conditions.
Climate change is thawing the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta’s permafrost, and it’s doing more than cracking foundations, sinking roads and accelerating erosion.
Winds of up to 85 mph ripped up the Southwest Alaska coast on Friday, upending smokehouses, tearing electric lines and flinging a house across the road.
About a year ago, Tununak opened a $19 million, state-of-the-art airport, but shifting permafrost is buckling the runway.
If you’re living in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta a hundred years from now, it’s going to be hot and wet, according to a new study by scientists at the International Arctic Research Center, an institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Winds gusted up to 46 mph and about 2.4 inches of rain fell from Friday to Sunday.
A 10-mile ice jam on the Lower Kuskokwim River has caused severe flooding in Tuluksak, with the area experiencing its worst flooding in over a decade.
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