Schools in Southcentral Alaska are closed due to a snowstorm and power outages, with the Seward Highway being deemed "impassable" and numerous vehicles stranded.

The smoke is from numerous wildfires burning in Canada’s Yukon Territory.

A winter storm in Anchorage and Mat-Su, Alaska has caused closures of state offices, schools, and bus services, with reports of stranded vehicles and accidents, and up to a foot of snow expected in some areas.

Mat-Su schools will be closed Tuesday due to a blizzard causing power outages and hazardous driving conditions.

Anchorage and Mat-Su Borough schools and state offices are closed Thursday as a third major winter storm this month coated the area with snow overnight Wednesday. “In the past 11 days, we’ve had 41.1 inches of snow which is a lot for Anchorage,” Baines said.

The slides come near the end of an avalanche season experts say is notable both for its heightened danger and lack of deaths.

All schools in Anchorage and the Mat-Su Borough are closed Wednesday due to slick roads across the region, as snowfall continues. “This is the heaviest snowfall the Anchorage area has seen in over 20 years,” said state Department of Transportation spokesman Justin Shelby. “Our crews are keeping up as best they can.”

With Anchorage schools remote again due to a 17-inch snowfall and strong winds, another storm is hitting Southcentral Alaska, potentially causing power outages as trees fall on electric lines.

Officials say the floodwaters are swamping Alaska towns, tearing buildings from foundations, seeping into homes and covering roads. In Glennallen, the local utility is setting up Porta-Potties around the community, and area residents are asked to limit water usage. The state transportation department said there was water over a portion of the Glenn Highway on Monday, but the road remained open.

Alaska is one of the only places in the world where peony flowers grow in the summer months. But the unusually cold, wet weather this year is delaying the blooms by weeks.

Mushers shrugged off jackets and dogs sunbathed in the snow as temperatures hovered around 40 degrees — hot by Alaska winter standards.

The lack of winter sea ice is keeping temperatures warm. Climatologist Rick Thoman says it's a "very clear climate change signal."

Snow dumped on Southcentral Alaska this weekend, with more than 8 inches falling in the Anchorage area and about 5 inches in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. A Climatologist says this weekend has led to a record amount of snowpack this late in the season.

Twenty-three of the 25 fires so far this year were ignited by human activity. While this year’s heavy snowpack and cold spring pushed back the start to fire season in many parts of the state, climate change is generally causing an earlier snowmelt, said climatologist Rick Thoman.

A drainage culvert beneath the street failed, causing the sinkhole.

A wayward walrus calf, just one month old, was rescued from the North Slope. Workers on the North Slope spotted the baby walrus on tundra, about four miles inland from the Beaufort Sea.

Light rain is expected to fall across much of the region Tuesday, with a storm possibly bringing more rain to Anchorage on Wednesday.

It turns out that Grubby the opossum — who hitched a ride to Alaska in a shipping container in March — had babies.

Two brothers, one dead and one experiencing hypothermia, were found about two miles from Pilot Station after their snowmachine became stuck in heavy snow during a storm.

A NOAA Ocean Exploration-led team has discovered what appears to be evidence of a large gas seep at a depth of nearly 1.4 miles (2,300 meters) along the Aleutian Trench. The discovery was found in data collected during the Seascape Alaska 1: Aleutians Deepwater Mapping expedition.