Southwest Alaska has had an unusual increase in lighting storms this month. That lightning has ignited at least half a dozen wildfires in the Bristol Bay area.

The territorial government is alerting residents to be prepared for potential impacts of flooding in certain areas of Ross River.

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev posted a video of the Aral Sea on his Telegram channel showing the surface of the Aral Sea.  “Flying over the Aral Sea… or rather, what is left of it,” Artemyev wrote under the video.

No one in Grayling has seen this big a whitefish before. ADFG lists state record for broad whitefish as 11 lbs. This one weighed in at 15 lbs!

It’s not often that Southcentral Alaska residents wake to thunder in the middle of the night. But what forecasters are calling an unusual storm moved from the Talkeetna Mountains into the Matanuska Valley and then Anchorage and south to the Kenai Peninsula from Wednesday night into Thursday morning. At least one lightning-caused structure fire was reported.

It's coming up to peak flood season in BC with extra thick snowpack melting into rivers. On top of that, an atmospheric river is coming.

“It’s been hot, it’s been dry, and it’s been windy. And those winds gusts of 20 miles per hour, it’s kind of funneled through the Andreafsky River drainage,” said Beth Ipsen. Federal entities sent in more firefighters this week, and some residents are thinking about preparing their go-bags.

Two villages along the Lower Yukon River have begun evacuating their most vulnerable residents from a tundra fire.The fire late Thursday was burning less than eight miles from St Mary’s and nearby Pitkas Point, and wind continues spreading the flames closer to the villages with a combined population of over 700 people. Yute Commuter Service is sending all its planes to St. Mary’s to evacuate residents, and Grant Aviation is prepared to assist.

Emergency measures organization has issued advisories for Upper Liard, Carmacks and Ross River areas.

'It flew right over Alaska and it landed just west of Herschel Island, at Qikiqtaruk [Territorial Park], along the coast along the Yukon's North Slope,' Cameron Eckert, a conservation biologist with Yukon Parks and a bird enthusiast, said of the bar-tailed godwit.

I have photos of four different sea cucumbers decaying, but my friend claims to have observed around 10 dead sea cucumbers.

The patient, who is receiving care at home, acquired the infection on a trip to Europe.

There were a plenty of what appeared to be juvenile dead stickle back fish on the top of the embankment of a few ponds.

"Since about May 25, crews have been seeing multiple species showing what we believe are signs of highly pathogenic avian influenza. The signs we are seeing widespread is a headshaking that we equate to "getting the cobwebs out", like a person may do when they first wake up. This behavior occurs regularly every couple minutes. This behavior has been observed in: black brant, cackling geese, bar-tailed godwits, dunlin, lapland longspurs, spectacled eiders, emperor geese, greater white-fronted geese, sabines gulls, glaucous gulls, and red-necked phalaropes."

The collapse was documented with drone imagery as was a permafrost rebound signature in the river water.

Off to a very slow start.

In an unusual event, a pair of beluga whales swam about 60 miles up the Kuskokwim River to Bethel. After word got out, boaters pursued the belugas and took at least one of them. Now, an official is working to collect samples of the animal to better understand where it came from.

"This is the first time in our lives that we have seen a cormorant in Kotzebue Sound."

Over the past five days there have been increasing reports of unusual behavior in a variety of bird species including brant goose, snow goose, white-fronted goose, and Canada goose.

As the spring snow melt the flooding cuts away the bank more every day. This observation includes photos showing the location of the community water source, transmission line.