While Northwest Arctic residents encounter bears year-round, such sightings are not common in Kotzebue this time of year, Cantine said. Charlie Henry Jr., an Elder from Kotzebue, agreed: “That is so strange — brown bear in the middle part of the coldest months.”

Whales native to Mexico and Central America are spotted dozens of times from Long Beach to the Palos Verdes Peninsula to Laguna Beach over the last three weeks.

A young Nunavummiut hunter, who's known for providing country food to his community, fell through the ice in late December on a snowmobile route he'd safely traveled just weeks before.

The Spenard Builders Supply facility in Anchorage suffered a significant roof collapse due to heavy snow, causing no injuries but damaging the structure and nearby utilities.

A storm caused flooding and road closures in New Hampshire's White Mountains and North Country, with ongoing concerns about rising river levels and dam operations.

A volcanic eruption began near Hagafell mountain on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland at 10:17 pm, following an M4.2 earthquake, with local authorities seeking to determine its impact.

Over 300 people were rescued from severe flooding in northeast Australia, with many stranded on rooftops and infrastructure damaged, including a closed Cairns Airport.

Over 230,000 customers in Maine face power outages due to a severe winter storm with high winds and heavy rain, prompting a multi-day restoration effort.

A powerful storm caused flooding and damage as it moved up the East Coast, drenching Florida and inundating South Carolina with record rainfall. Rising sea levels driven by human-caused climate change mean even relatively weak weather systems can now produce storm surges previously associated with hurricanes, said Meteorologist Jeff Masters, co-founder of the Weather Underground. In South Carolina that's worsened by natural subsidence along the coast.

A Lyme disease-carrying tick was found on a dog in Fort Simpson, N.W.T., with uncertainty about whether the tick originated locally or from a southern province.

Rapid erosion and permafrost degradation mean school district officials are in a race to shore up the building for the remainder of the school year.

The expedition revealed that gannets have easy access to plastic, as their nests are mostly made from plastic debris. Hundreds of dead gannets were also observed by the experts, with it being estimated that three factors played a role in their deaths: natural attrition, bird flu, and plastic pollution.

A rare, emaciated fin whale was found dead near Kodiak, Alaska, with the local Sun'aq Tribe conducting a necropsy. There isn’t enough data for biologists to declare a trend yet, but these whales are being found on the heels of an unusual mortality event for gray whales in the Pacific Ocean.

It is not common to see fin whales stranding along the West Coast. The species tends to stay in deeper water compared with gray whales, which travel from 10,000 to 14,000 miles (16,000 to 22,500 kilometers) round trip up and down the coast in annual migrations. There were not obvious signs of the cause of death.

A 52-foot fin whale carcass appeared on a San Diego beach with no clear cause of death; it was towed back to sea.

The sardines and some mackerel washed ashore in Hakodate on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido on Thursday morning, creating a sliver blanket along a stretch of beach about a kilometer (0.6 mile) long. Takashi Fujioka, a Hakodate Fisheries Research Institute said the fish may have been chased by larger fish, become exhausted due to a lack of oxygen while moving in a densely packed school, and were washed up by the waves.

The virus was first reported among brown skua on Bird Island, off South Georgia. Since then, researchers and observers have reported mass deaths of elephant seals, as well as increased deaths of fur seals, kelp gulls and brown skua at several other sites. Researchers warn of one of ‘largest ecological disasters of modern times’ if the highly contagious disease reaches penguin colonies.

Eaglecrest Ski Area's opening is delayed again due to warm weather and rain, with no new target date set for the season start.

A dog at the Kodiak Animal Shelter was euthanized after testing positive for canine distemper, leading to a quarantine and a halt on adoptions.

Avian influenza or “bird flu” is hitting Bay Area poultry farms hard, with a quarter of a million birds euthanized in Sonoma County this week alone. Mike Weber, the co-owner of Sunrise Farms in Petaluma, says around 82,000 of his egg-laying chickens had to be euthanized after birds started testing positive for avian flu.