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.
The spill followed a sudden rise in warm temperatures in recent days. Hooper Bay Mayor Sandra Hill said that the thaw and rain had melted the previously frozen land surrounding the sewage lagoon, causing a wall of the lagoon to cave.
A critical artery is threatened by thawing permafrost.
This is not the first time this village has faced the threat of erosion and flooding, but relocating won’t be as easy as it was last time.
Two quakes shook the coast of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Tuesday night about 45 miles offshore of the community of Hooper Bay.
In villages like Kongiganak, communities have stopped burying their dead because, as the permafrost melts, the oldest part of their cemetery is sinking.
Climate change is thawing the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta’s permafrost, and it’s doing more than cracking foundations, sinking roads and accelerating erosion.
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.
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