It's been a challenging year for whalers in Utqiagvik. Crews started going out in September, but found the bowheads weren't appearing in their usual concentrations in the waters closer to shore. On the water Nov. 16 Panigiuq Crew landed the first whale of the season for Utqiagvik, later than many people can remember ever bringing one in before.
The school site is about six miles northeast of town. If constructed, it would serve as the terminus of the evacuation route and as a modern shelter capable of housing the entire community.
Aerial surveys this September and October show the bowheads aren’t where they usually are.
The roughly 300 miles of hard-packed snow roads were constructed under the Community Winter Access Trails (CWAT) project, headed by the North Slope Borough.
The recent storm brought water levels up to the lagoon bank by town. Along the Chukchi Coast, storm surge and tides were expected to raise sea levels four to six feet above the normal high tide line, the weather service noted.
Sixty years ago there were 12 of these such cellars in Kaktovik.Today there is only one left. All the other family cellars have been flooded and have collapsed.
Of the 89 wildfires burning across Alaska right now, several are in the northern part of the state, either in the Arctic or near its southern boundary.
About 20 to 30 medium-sized birds with black backs and white bellies were found spaced out along the entire beach of the island.
The flooding was caused by a weather system that moved up to the Bering Sea from the tropics, and raised water levels and dumped rain across much of western Alaska.
The Arctic Sounder - Serving the Northwest Arctic and the North Slope
While industry has had to adapt to changes, many locals are still struggling to find a new normal amidst the shifting seasons.
Cleanup and recovery from the recent storm that battered the North Slope coastline may carry a price tag exceeding $10 million.
Dozens of walruses were found dead earlier this month at their seasonal haulout near Point Lay. The findings came just about a day after locals said they saw an airplane they believed to be flying inappropriately over the herd, which comes to shore each year once the sea ice recedes past the continental shelf and it becomes too deep for them to feed.
For one day last week, the village of Deering needed to use a boat to get to the airport.
The storm began Sept. 28 and continued for several days. A handful of Utqiaġvik’s roads were damaged or destroyed, and the community's freshwater source was nearly compromised.
As of Tuesday, two new fires had started in the Galena Zone, bringing the total number of fires in the area to 35. To date this year, wildland fires have burned more than 44,000 acres in the region.
With the average temperature hovering north of negative this winter, Utqiaġvik and much of the Arctic once again broke records with a season that didn't match up to historic expectations.
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.
"Yesterday we came over to do an assessment of the high-water flood storm," said Northwest Arctic Borough Deputy Director of Public Services Dickie Moto, who grew up in Deering. "They lost a lot of ground on the front and on the back side of town because of the high water and rough seas.
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