A Winter Wind Machine

Gardening columnist Jeff Lowenfels explains how trees are built to survive extreme high winds.

Unusually high winds and temperatures in Southcentral Alaska have caused power outages, flooding, and landslides, with gusts reaching up to 100 mph and prompting closures and warnings across the region.

Despite the fourth snowiest October on record, roughly half of precipitation in Anchorage has been rain this winter.

Nome experienced an unusual snowless Christmas despite not having a dry December, with rain replacing snow and creating icy conditions that hinder traditional winter activities and local events.

The first half of June was Anchorage’s windiest in more than 50 years, the result of an unusually stormy spring in Alaska.

An unusually strong storm for this time of year was bringing rain and heavy winds to parts of Southcentral Alaska on Sunday.

Roads remain dangerous, and power outages persist into Sunday evening in parts of Anchorage and the Matanuska and Susitna valleys.

These windy conditions have started to negatively impact sea ice coverage in the Bering Strait. Based on satellite imagery and observations from residents across the region, more open water has started to appear along coastlines and thicker ice has been pushed around, climatologist Rick Thoman said. He noted that sea ice conditions are drastically different in the Bering Strait than they were five days ago.

Strong south winds hit 71 miles per hour in St. Michael, Shishmaref had its sea ice blown away and the Nome Airport saw 0.64 inches of precipitation – mostly in the form of rain - last weekend. The storm that hit on Saturday, Dec. 18 and continued all day Sunday brought the total precipitation for December thus far to 2.04 inches.

Back-to-back winter storms hit Nome and the region with very strong, screaming winds and accompanying blowing snow. While the first storm on Friday seemed just like a warm up, the second storm hit the region with very strong winds that knocked out power in Wales, ripped buildings apart in Golovin and brought water levels up 6.73 feet over normal. The high winds also pushed away ice cover.

Extremely high winds blew over Northwest Alaska this weekend, pushing away ice cover and cutting power in some communities. The storm is expected to be 100 miles west of Utqiagvik by 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning and continue to weaken and drift north after that.

A University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist said that the reason why Western Alaska is getting windier is that it will soon inherit the Aleutian Islands’ storms. In today’s climate, the Aleutian islands are the windiest area in Alaska.

A storm bringing strong wind, rain and snow to Southcentral Alaska on Tuesday caused power outages from Anchorage to Whittier and damaged some homes on the Anchorage Hillside. The weather service reported a peak gust of 133 mph on Sunburst mountain on the western Kenai Peninsula.

Yesterday, damaging high wind in Unalakleet sent debris flying into high voltage power lines, knocking out electricity for half of the village. After roughly nine hours, electricity was restored to…

A big winter storm came in from the Bering Sea and battered the Western Alaska coast from the evening of Nov. 25 through Nov. 26. Some communities, like Hooper Bay, have reported flooding.

We have over two weeks of cold windy weather. It started in mid April around the time of the big wind storm. And in relation of the wind storm on April 24th, Rick Thoman wrote: "Winds this strong in the Anchorage are rare at this time of year. An unusually strong storm for the season in the southeastern Bering Sea produced southeast strong winds blowing across the Chugach Mountains. However, being April, the temperature profile of the atmosphere close to the ground was more conducive than in winter for allowing the very strong winds aloft to reach down to the ground.

Passenger experiences usually turbulent conditions on winter flights.

We've had so much wind this winter, on the 15th of January, the winds were warm!!!!!!

Anchorage sidewalks were slick with ice and the roads were full of puddles because of unseasonably high temperatures.By mid morning the temperature had reached 46 degrees.

Weather patterns have changed so much in the past several years.

At lower elevations, there has been melting, hurricane force winds and rain, which have stripped away the snow and left the trails bare, wet, and icy.

Folks here are famous for being able to handle the cold, but anything wet in December has always made us nervous. Especially wet falling from the sky. Lately, weather, our favorite nemesis, has broken the rules. Our confidence in the most-trustworthy feature of the Arctic -- winter -- has been wounded.