“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.
This has become the new norm across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Late winters and sudden thawing have turned roads into slush and made rivers and sloughs, which are necessary for travel, less safe because they take longer to freeze.
That hurts coastal communities that hunt on the ice. But colder weather may be coming, at least to some portions of Alaska. Ice should be hugging the coast near the village of Gambell, perched on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, said Mayor Susan Apassingok, on Tuesday. But ice isn't there.
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.
Climate change is thawing the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta’s permafrost, and it’s doing more than cracking foundations, sinking roads and accelerating erosion.
Possibly an effect of thawing permafrost.
Sinkhole appears along road
2-22-12 Pressure ice ridges "Vuneqs" - Kwigillingok, Alaska, USA
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