Port Heiden’s road to its harbor and old village site is crumbling into the sea and the lake on the other side of it will likely breach soon. “The road is basically gone. [Erosion]’s cut right half into the road,” said Scott Anderson, the Native Village of Port Heiden’s Tribal Environmental Director.
City park staff have set up barriers in hopes of encouraging passersby to stay far away. Potential fixes could include putting up a wall and relocating the bike path or road.
As of Tuesday, two new fires had started in the Galena Zone, bringing the total number of fires in the area to 35. To date this year, wildland fires have burned more than 44,000 acres in the region.
The incident appears similar to an oil and gas release in 2017 blamed on thawing permafrost and hot production fluids.
The Air Force is trying to better understand the erosion bearing down on its valuable radar sites.
A September storm caused damage in Utqiagvik, and Gov. Bill Walker declared a disaster there last month.
Because ice makes up a good portion of the underground foundation of northern Alaska, thawing has dropped the landscape as much as 3 feet in some places.
A new study estimates that climate impacts to public infrastructure in Alaska will total about $5 billion by century's end.
In villages like Kongiganak, communities have stopped burying their dead because, as the permafrost melts, the oldest part of their cemetery is sinking.
Temperatures in the area were unseasonably high last week, reaching into the mid-40s, according to the National Weather Service. Then temperatures dropped below freezing Sunday and into Monday morning. "There's a lot of water flowing underground in this area," McCarthy said. The freeze-thaw "caused some instability and that made it slide."
When 200 million metric tons of rock tumbled down a remote Southeast Alaska mountain in October, nobody was around to see it. But thanks to a beefed-up seismic network and a new system that can distinguish landslides from earthquakes, scientists knew it had happened.
Alaskas tundra landscapes carpet a good portion of the state, from the North Slope to the elbow of the Alaska Peninsula. Researchers say it's slowly sinking in places -- as much as a fifth of an inch each year.
The Northway Mall in northeast Anchorage sits almost totally empty. That’s led to people dumping loads of trash, furniture, appliances and industrial waste all over the property.
The McCarthy Road was closed between Mile 0 and 1 in Chitina on Monday, June 3, 2024, after a portion of the road sank. The transportation department is still assessing the cause of the road settlement, Perreault said, but it is not river washout or a landslide.
The president of the Canary Islands said that by 11 p.m. some 5,000 people had been evacuated from their homes.
It’s not clear whether the unrest will lead to an eruption at Tanaga Volcano, which is located on an uninhabited island about 65 miles from Adak.
“This has been a very trying time,” mother Tanisha Charles said. “You don’t prepare for this. You think of fires, you think of earthquakes, but you never think of a mudslide in the middle of town.”
The McDonald Fire has grown to over 39,000 acres west of the Tanana River, with statewide fires consuming 72,000 acres; critical fire danger and smoke advisories are in effect.
An evacuation alert was also issued Friday for residents of the Lower Salcha River, from river mile 3 to 40. The Middle Salcha remains under a SET status, from river
The rapid retreat of Barry Glacier, 28 miles northeast of Whittier, could release millions of tons of rock into Harriman Ford and generate a large tsunami in Prince William Sound, according to Alaska's top geologist.
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