As of 5 am local time, the Point Hope Airport is recording a temperature of 19 degrees F, sustained winds of 63 mph and a gust of 78 miles per hour. Some 216 miles south, at Nome, winds are at 40 mph and gusting to 52 mph, with the temperature at 33 degrees F. That is just a small part of the weather along the western coast of Alaska this Wednesday. The Norton Sound will be at the center of the affected area.
A super storm is roaring across the Bering Sea to impact Alaska. If this were a tropical storm, it would be named and termed a hurricane or typhoon. With the storm come winds gusting to hurricane strength, heavy snow, pounding surf and what may be a record storm surge. Nome is expecting a surge between six and eight feet, which will overtop sea walls and flood the lower portion of the community.
A dozen or more native villages are of more concern to the authorities. If the surge is high enough, many will have no evacuation route and will be cut off by the sea. Coastal erosion, already a serious concern in the region, will be accelerated by the storm. The nearest Coast Guard ships are hundreds of miles south at Kodiak.
Pressure at the heart of this storm is measured at 946 MB or 27.85 inches. The National Weather Service is reporting waves of forty feet in the Bering Sea. For comparison, Hurricane Katrina had a pressure of 920 MB. This storm would rank at number 30 in the Weather Service’s list of the most severe hurricanes from 1851 to 2010 if it were a hurricane.
Due to the isolation of the region and the low population density, much of the reporting for this storm is coming from users of social media. Twitter users are using the hashtag #akstorm to mark their tweets. CNN is quoting extensively from these reports in its storm coverage. The largest community in the area is Nome and there are about 9,200 people in its census area as of the 2010 Census.