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.
Scattered power outages were reported this morning, and as the wind began picking up early this afternoon, more are expected. As of 9 a.m., unofficial measurements showed more than 19 inches of snow on Old Murphy Dome Road, 14 inches in Goldstream and almost a foot in Two Rivers. The official measurement on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus was 12.4 inches.
A Houston man was injured by a moose near his home, an unusual event linked to increased moose aggression due to harsh winter conditions.
A Wales resident shot and killed the bear. With the loss of sea ice and the ocean staying open later in the year, polar bears have been spending more time on land, which increases the chance of human encounters.
Though snow is scant in Anchorage, organizers are confident they will be able to host the Jan. 3-8 race series.
A total of 14.7 inches of snow fell between 8 p.m. Thursday and 8 p.m. Friday, barely eclipsing the previous record for the date of 14.6 inches, set in 1970.
With millions of dollars in damage to a new health clinic and imperiled infrastructure, the borough is requesting help from the National Guard. Yakutat has seen up to 6 feet of snow in recent weeks and a rare cold snap that pushed temperatures below zero.
While industry has had to adapt to changes, many locals are still struggling to find a new normal amidst the shifting seasons.
Even if a storm does hit Western Alaska, thicker sea ice will always be more resistant than last year’s ice was at this time, a climatologist says.
Four teams had scratched as of 7 p.m. Saturday because of the icy conditions, said Kuskokwim 300 race director Madelene Reichard. "It's the same thing for all of them," Reichard said. "The dogs aren't used to running on the ice, and people were wanting to keep their dogs healthy."
No one was hurt when a slab avalanche buried one child and partially buried two others.
Arctic sea ice last month reached its greatest extent for the season, and it was the lowest in the satellite record. Now researchers say that ice is also younger and thinner than it once was.
A borough employee who went to measure ice at Chena Lake got first-hand evidence that the lake ice ready for vehicles. “Lo and behold, there was a truck upside down on the bottom in about 25 feet of water,” Haas said. “No one was in it.”
The snowfall came after Anchorage broke the daily record for warmest Dec. 31, with temperatures at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport measuring 46 degrees.
“It was a beautiful event that we were lucky to have survived,” Andrew Hooper said.
The cold and wet hunters built a fire to keep warm until Alaska Army National Guard rescuers arrived hours later.
The storm that walloped Southcentral Alaska also left about 32 inches of snow in Moose Pass and 30 in Seward.
Climate change has allowed spotted seals to find new hunting grounds, but the marine mammals ultimately depend on sea ice to survive.
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.
Danny Foster and Mike Hawley of Kivalina were ice fishing outside of town when they came upon something they’d never seen before. Incidentally, similar ice balls or ice eggs were reported on an ocean beach in Finland on the same day.
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