Undue temps fuel Alaska new winter of discontent
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Winter is off to a late start in parts of the nation’s largest — and usually coldest — state.
Months of higher-thannormal temperatures in areas of rural Alaska have opened dangerous gaps in frozen rivers that residents use to travel from village to village and to hunting grounds since there are no roads.
One troublesome ice highway is the half-milewide Kuskokwim River, where a man died New Year’s Eve after he and five family members — traveling on a snowmobile and sled — fell into a gaping hole. The others survived.
Search and rescue teams in the southwest Alaska commercial hub of Bethel have been marking holes on the Kuskokwim, but there were so many, they ran out of the $300-a-roll reflective tape.
While they wait for more supplies to be shipped, residents in villages along the river and its tributaries have been marking the openings with tree branches.
It’s a role switch with of the lower 48, where dangerously cold temperatures have been blamed for dozens of deaths.
The unseasonable warmth in parts of Alaska is a factor in making last month the warmest December on record for the entire state, experts say.
The statewide average temperature for the month was 19.4 degrees, far higher than the historical average of 3.7 degrees, according to Rick Thoman, climatologist for the National Weather Service’s Alaska region.
Open water also marks a 22-mile stretch of the Kuskokwim that’s part of Alaska’s famous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, prompting concerns among organizers about the route between two rural communities. The race starts in March.
“I don’t think right now — today — that we could run the Iditarod between Nikolai and McGrath on the normal river trail,” race marshal Mark Nordman said. “But we have a secondary route.”
To the south, the soggy trails complicated travel for many recently wanting to visit relatives and friends in other villages to celebrate Slaviq — a hybrid Russian Orthodox Christmas and Alaska Native spiritual tradition that developed generations ago in parts of the state from deeply rooted ties with Russians, including missionaries.
The splotchy ice highways also are creating challenges in reaching traditional hunting grounds. Most area residents rely on a subsistence lifestyle and normally would be out looking for caribou, beaver and otter this time of year to supplement their cache of salmon and moose meat.
But some hunters are waiting for better conditions, said Boris Epchook, who has lived most of his 54 years in the Yup’ik Eskimo village of Kwethluk, east of Bethel. He added glassy ice has replaced snow in places, which is hard on snowmobiles and four-wheelers.
Epchook said he has seen dramatic environmental changes in the past two decades, but never to this degree.
“These are a lot more holes on the river (than) I’ve seen and heard of over the years,” he said. “The weather patterns have definitely changed this year.”
Weather Service data bear that out.
Bethel, representative of the region, had the warmest fall and early winter on record. The average temperature for the period between Oct. 1 and the first week of January was 28.6 degrees, far above the 30year average of 18.3 degrees, according to Thoman.
“That would be 10.3 degrees warmer than normal,” he said. “That’s really quite remarkable.”
Residents worry all the changes.
“The cold, the ice, the animals is everything to us,” Oomittuk said. “We’ve always lived in the cold.” about