Areas of the Southeast Alaska city “received between 3 and 7 inches of rain” in 24 hours over the weekend. The sodden ground caused mudslides in some areas, and wrecked roads and ditches around John Street and Peters Lane in Douglas.
A new study estimates that climate impacts to public infrastructure in Alaska will total about $5 billion by century's end.
The world’s permafrost holds vast stores of carbon. What happens when it thaws?
Temperatures in the area were unseasonably high last week, reaching into the mid-40s, according to the National Weather Service. Then temperatures dropped below freezing Sunday and into Monday morning. "There's a lot of water flowing underground in this area," McCarthy said. The freeze-thaw "caused some instability and that made it slide."
Alaska Division of Forestry spokesman Norm McDonald said the 2-acre fire's exact cause has not been determined but is suspected to be similar to that of four smaller Mat-Su wildfires earlier Thursday. Those blazes were tracked to backfires from a white Chevrolet pickup truck.
Smoke from a handful of fires in northeast Alaska and across the border in Canada drifted south to Fairbanks on Tuesday and is expected to linger through Wednesday night.
People in Kodiak, Homer and Sand Point were among those who headed to higher ground after the quake prompted a tsunami warning from the Alaska Peninsula to the western Kenai Peninsula.
City park staff have set up barriers in hopes of encouraging passersby to stay far away. Potential fixes could include putting up a wall and relocating the bike path or road.
Melting permafrost, which some attribute to climate changes, is creating huge craters in Siberia. The craters are appearing as layers of ice melt, and larg
The significant explosive eruption started around 10 a.m. Monday, the Alaska Volcano Observatory reported.
The incident appears similar to an oil and gas release in 2017 blamed on thawing permafrost and hot production fluids.
When 200 million metric tons of rock tumbled down a remote Southeast Alaska mountain in October, nobody was around to see it. But thanks to a beefed-up seismic network and a new system that can distinguish landslides from earthquakes, scientists knew it had happened.
Because ice makes up a good portion of the underground foundation of northern Alaska, thawing has dropped the landscape as much as 3 feet in some places.
Land's End Resort was built more than 50 years ago, and during that time, the Homer Spit has changed dramatically. A change in the direction and intensity of winds may be driving the faster erosion.
Winds gusted up to 46 mph and about 2.4 inches of rain fell from Friday to Sunday.
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.
Akiak City Administrator David Gilila says the village is in danger of becoming an island in the Kuskokwim River.
A new report identifies climate change as one of the challenges facing transportation in Alaska's most famous national park.
In villages like Kongiganak, communities have stopped burying their dead because, as the permafrost melts, the oldest part of their cemetery is sinking.
"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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