The size of king salmon returning to Western Alaska rivers to spawn has been decreasing over the past few decades. Researchers at the University of Alaska
In Chefornak, a family was forced to evacuate their home because a sinkhole caused by thawing permafrost formed underneath it. That family had to move into a building intended to be a quarantine facility.
Kwigillingok, a community on the Bering Sea coast of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, is used to some flooding during high tides. But in recent years, that flooding has grown more severe, reaching a new threshold last week.
The Kuskokwim River king salmon run does not look particularly strong this year, but chum numbers look even worse. Historically, around 60% of the salmon in the river at this point in the season would be chum or sockeye, but right now Bethel Test Fishery numbers show that just over 20% of the salmon are.
“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.
The spill followed a sudden rise in warm temperatures in recent days. Hooper Bay Mayor Sandra Hill said that the thaw and rain had melted the previously frozen land surrounding the sewage lagoon, causing a wall of the lagoon to cave.
The village is losing ground three times faster than it was 10 years ago, according to studies of Napakiak’s erosion. During high tide, the river is only 64 feet from the high-schoolers’ original classroom and gets closer by the day. On windy days, waves crash against the shore where students used to play, battering it until the land relents and crumbles.
Akiak City Administrator David Gilila says the village is in danger of becoming an island in the Kuskokwim River.
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.
As many as 29 people have died due to heatstroke in South Korea, according to the South Korean Ministry of Health, Welfare and Disease Control.
Kuskokwim River chum salmon numbers remain off-the-charts low. However, sockeyes are still coming in strong. Meanwhile, the summer rain has not been
Some people in Bethel have called this the dreariest, wettest summer of their lives, and they're right. Last month was the wettest July in Bethel in over
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