This brant was seen at Mile 16 of the Nome-Council Road exhibiting spinning behavior.
On Sunday night, a plump ringed seal pup was spotted on the ice in front of Breaker’s Bar on Nome’s Front Street. UAF Alaska Sea Grant agent Gay Sheffield was called and moved the pup to a more secluded beach. The ice had likely gone out too fast and the mother finished up the normal weaning process on the ice chunks in front of Nome.
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.
Following another year of stark climate impacts in the Arctic, scientists warned Tuesday of a new scourge hitting the region: marine trash. With the region warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, sea ice that has long blanketed the Arctic Ocean is disappearing, opening new routes to shipping.
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.
Current sea ice extent in Northern Alaska waters is the highest it’s been since November 2001.
"I've seen photos documenting one squirrel in Nome from 2007 and a Nome Nugget article in 2019, but we've had 3-4 reports of red squirrels this summer."
The commercial Silver harvest in the Norton Sound yielded the lowest numbers since 2002.This trend follows suit from last year as well, which yielded far less than projected. The run was “very poor,” Menard said. The preliminary catch was 7,100 Silvers. That’s less than half caught in the commercial fishery last year.
St. Lawrence Island, home to two native villages in the region, is also the summer home of several migratory seabird species, including kittiwakes, auklets, murre and shearwaters. Over the last several years, though, the bird colonies on the island have been shrinking, and no one has been able to determine why.
Some possible causes for late budding in berries include more precipitation when flowers bloom, which reduces pollination, an overall lack of pollinators, or sometimes animals and birds eat the berries during the winter.
Starting last week, regional residents reported numerous dead seabirds washing up on regional beaches. Alaska Sea Grant Agent Gay Sheffield said there were carcasses of murres, puffins, shearwaters and a kittiwake starting on July 28; in Golovin, Solomon, Nome and a dead Little Diomede.
By Julia Lerner Richard Jessee, a longtime summer miner, survived an aggressive bear attack near his cabin last week.
The prospects are dim for this summer’s Norton Sound commercial fishing and crabbing seasons.
For four years in row now, March has failed to deliver glorious weather for spring outings, safe travels and happy hunting. Instead, March has come to be synonymous with dangerous weather condition.
The head of Alaska’s Wildlife Disease and Health Surveillance Program confirms that the City of Nome has a higher than normal case count of rabies in the red fox population. Usually in winter, most of the cases come from Prudhoe Bay and Utqiagvik. This winter most of the cases are from Nome, as well as from Kivalina and other villages around Kotzebue.
Sea ice extent in the Bering Sea was at record low levels at the end of 2020. And with recent strong northerly winds combined with mild temperatures, sea ice coverage in the Bering Strait region is still not ideal.
Similar to the last storm that hit the region earlier this month, there is hardly any sea ice in the Bering Sea to minimize the damage to coastal areas.
“My boys told me my cabin went into the river,” said Rita Hulkill, who is 82. “My cabin had been there since the 70s. The water has never been that high ever.”
Late last week a strong Bering Sea storm hit the region, bringing winds up to 50mph, blowing snow, and high-water. Some communities saw significant erosion while others were mostly unscathed.
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