The McDonald Fire has grown to over 39,000 acres west of the Tanana River, with statewide fires consuming 72,000 acres; critical fire danger and smoke advisories are in effect.

Twenty-three of the 25 fires so far this year were ignited by human activity. While this year’s heavy snowpack and cold spring pushed back the start to fire season in many parts of the state, climate change is generally causing an earlier snowmelt, said climatologist Rick Thoman.

Anchorage-based photographer saw something wild — a sudden, bright light on the northern horizon that quickly started to take on a spiral shape as it drew nearer. The spiral “appears to be rocket engine exhaust from a SpaceX Transporter-7 mission that launched on the Falcon 9 about three hours earlier in California.”

On June 19, 2015, a slow-moving low-pressure system with spectacular thunderstorms that produced little rain began making its way through Alaska. By the time the storms finally petered out about a week later, 61,000 bolts of lightning had been unleashed on a boreal forest in the state. No one had ever seen anything quite like it, not even in 2004, when 8,500 lightning strikes were recorded in a single day.

Bugs of various shapes and sizes are part of life in Alaska, and it can be easy for them to escape notice.

They're a parasite many people don't think live in Alaska, but Fish and Game says ticks are here and their numbers are on the rise.

Researchers are finding ticks in Alaska that haven't historically been here. Some hitchhiked from the Lower 48—but others seem to have settled in.