Homer Mayor Rachel Lord declared a local emergency after water and debris washed over the Homer Spit last weekend, damaging parts of the road and forcing closures.

Heavy rains and melting glaciers are making landslides in the area more common, says a geologist.

Two harbor seal pups, one from Naknek and another from Wrangell, were recently rescued and are receiving care at the Alaska SeaLife Center due to malnourishment and other health issues.

Chugach Electric acknowledges the high frequency of winter power outages in Cooper Landing and Moose Pass, attributing them to heavy snowfall and considering solutions like local maintenance crews.

Usually, the Snow Glacier and Skilak lakes release every two or three years. Both at the same time is unprecedented.

Discoloration of water in bay. Is this an algal bloom?

It turns out that Grubby the opossum — who hitched a ride to Alaska in a shipping container in March — had babies.

The female seal pup — estimated to be around six months old — was seen swimming “erratically” near the shore in Sitka last month, according to a press release from the center. Worried Sitka residents then reported the pup to the center’s 24-hour stranding hotline.

Two dead otters (one recent) on Kasitsna Bay side. We also found another one yesterday on the Kachemak side.

The creek slide is the latest environmental incident to strike the Kenai Peninsula this week: a massive landslide in Seward on May 7 continues to block Lowell Point Road, a wildfire broke out near Sportsman’s Landing on May 8 and a separate wildfire broke out on May 10 near Wildman’s.

The landslide, estimated to be 300 feet wide, has completely cut off the community of Lowell Point. Lowell Point Road is the only land access between Lowell Point and the City of Seward. As a result the City of Seward cannot access critical wastewater facilities.

I was looking forward to ice skating this winter. I had bought a pair of Nordic blades. This morning, I woke up to over a foot of snow. It is an early storm for Seward, which was blanketed in white this morning.

It's cold. And those frigid temperatures aren't going away anytime soon. The cold has set in across most of Alaska and set daily record lows in places like Homer, King Salmon and Bethel. It's relatively early to be seeing such cold.

High-fire danger prompts burn ban this week, A burn suspension is in effect for the Kenai Peninsula due to high fire danger, high fire activity and limited firefighting resources, according to a special notice from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.

However, if ingested by oysters and other shellfish, the sudden burst of a ciliate form of zooplankton — or animal plankton — called Mesodinium rubrum could turn their meat pink.

A decomposing sleeper shark was found on the beach in Kasitsna Bay.

Partially decomposed whale

Coastal Alaskans were roused out of bed last night following a 7.8 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami warning. The warning was canceled within a matter of hours.

Until 2007, there have been only three verified reports of green sturgeon in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, and two anecdotal reports from the Copper River and Unalaska areas.

The Seward facility began housing five seals found in the Cook Inlet area and another that was rescued in Juneau.