“It got very cold the day we got there, it got down to like single digits and ice came out of the mountains and rivers and sloughs everywhere,” said Allyn Long, general manager of Alaska Logistics.
This has become the new norm across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Late winters and sudden thawing have turned roads into slush and made rivers and sloughs, which are necessary for travel, less safe because they take longer to freeze.
When Jazmin James hadn’t returned to Tununak by Easter Sunday as planned, the family reported him missing. His snowmachine was found on sea ice, partly submerged in water.
That hurts coastal communities that hunt on the ice. But colder weather may be coming, at least to some portions of Alaska. Ice should be hugging the coast near the village of Gambell, perched on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, said Mayor Susan Apassingok, on Tuesday. But ice isn't there.
About a year ago, Tununak opened a $19 million, state-of-the-art airport, but shifting permafrost is buckling the runway.
Climate change is thawing the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta’s permafrost, and it’s doing more than cracking foundations, sinking roads and accelerating erosion.
Possibly an effect of thawing permafrost.
Open water interferes with subsistence practices.
The lack of sea ice in Toksook Bay, has allowed for a uniquel sighting - a January beluga whale!
2-22-12 Pressure ice ridges "Vuneqs" - Kwigillingok, Alaska, USA
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