The National Weather Service is predicting another icy winter ahead for the Bering Sea. Lead ice forecaster Kathleen Cole released her winter outlook on Thursday. She’s predicting the eastern Bering Sea – including the Pribilof Islands – will have heavier ice accumulation than usual, in keeping with a multi-year trend for region.

“But by no means what we had last year,” Cole adds. “Last year was a phenomenal year for ice.”

That said, the ice this year is already moving in ahead of schedule. Cole says there’s ice within 50 miles of St. Paul Island already, and she’s expecting it to fully engulf the island by mid-January. Unlike last winter though, Cole doesn’t think it will stick around.

“It’s going to be more normal last year. What happened last year was the ice came down and it just stayed there. Normally what happens is the ice comes down, then we have a storm system that comes in and the southerly winds ahead of the front will push the ice up, and then the northerly winds behind it will pull it back down, so it kind of yo-yos back and forth across the Bering Shelf for a few months. And I think that’s what’s going to happen this year.”

That’s good news for snow crabbers, who struggled with the persistent ice cover last winter. It repeatedly shut down the fishery and ultimately ended up extending the season into June.

There’s also some good news for crab grounds west of 172 degrees. The outlook for that area is for average or below average ice cover, decreasing towards the west. That trend is in line with the rest of the Arctic, which so far is experiencing below-average ice extents.