Cargo ships have scattered to avoid the storm in the western Bering Sea. (Courtesy of Marine Exchange of Alaska)

After a week of warnings, a heavy-duty storm washed into the Bering Sea early this morning. Hurricane-force winds smacked the far western Aleutian Islands. And while the storm has disrupted life at sea, it’s expected to start losing power fast.

KUCB’s Lauren Rosenthal has more.

As the storm made its way into the Bering Sea this morning, it became clear that it wouldn’t be entering the record books.

Joe Wegman is a meteorologist for the National Weather Service. He says the low pressure system isn’t strong enough to take the title of lowest ever. But it is packing a punch.

"The storm right now is over the far western Bering Sea to the northwest of Shemya," Wegman says. "It’s reaching its peak intensity now. From this point forward, it’s going to be very slowly weakening."

That’s because weather fronts are breaking off from the low-pressure system, and hitting individual islands like Shemya. It’s a small outpost in the western Aleutians, with just a few military instruments and contractors.

Gusting winds reached 96 miles per hour there on Friday morning. Wegman says that kind of activity could continue through the chain as the weekend wears on.

"Each time a front comes through, you can have a short-term increase in the winds with gusts that could get even higher," Wegman says. "And they always are accompanied by a wind shift."

A shift in direction, that is. Every front takes a little bit out of the storm -- including the one that was just hitting Adak on Friday evening.

City manager Layton Lockett was watching it build.

"It was calm this morning, which would have been really nice for the rest of the day," Lockett says, laughing. "But sadly it has increased in wind. So we’ve seen it peak at about 49 [mph] so far. But other than that, life goes on right now."

The same goes for Unalaska. While moderately gusty winds are expected overnight, the skies were calm and sunny on Friday morning.

It would have been a good day for the F/V Cornelia Marie to finish up their red king crab season. But instead, they were tied up at the dock in Unalaska -- and engineer Travis Lofland was fixing a damaged crane.

"If this wasn’t going on? I should be down in Key West racing the offshore powerboat world championships, is what I should be doing," Lofland said. "Yeah, unfortunately, it doesn’t always go as planned, and here we are still in Dutch [Harbor]."

Like a lot of fishing crews, they opted not to take their chances on the water.

Captain Wes Swimelar has been fishing for 35 years. And in that time, he's worked in seas as rough as those projected to hit the central Bering Sea this weekend.

But the crab harvest isn’t a derby anymore. With no time crunch and plenty of opilio crab on board, Swimelar and the crew of the F/V Barbara J decided to go back to St. Paul in the Pribilof Islands.

"We probably could go charging back right out to the grounds and soon as we're done unloading and get our asses kicked today, tonight, and tomorrow," Swimelar says. "But I'm not going to. I'm going to go to the north side of the island and put my anchor out, sit there for about 36 hours, and go fishing."

Cargo ships were also taking steps to get out of the storm’s path.

Brett Farrell tracks those vessels for the Marine Exchange of Alaska. Some container ships have "gone much farther north after going through Unimak Pass," Farrell says, traveling hundreds of miles away from the primary shipping route to avoid rough seas.

"And then what I'm also seeing is a lot of cargo vessels just kind of stopped and loitering and just kind of piling up around the Shumagin Islands off the Alaska Peninsula," Farrell says.

They’re not bunched around shore, though. Farrell says vessels have to stay 12 miles away from the coast right now as part of a new regulatory program implemented this year.

More than 1,800 cargo vessels have signed up to cut their risk of an oil spill rather than as a way to meet a new Coast Guard regulation. Otherwise, it would force them to have fast access to spill response equipment from anywhere in the state.

"And that’s virtually impossible to meet for the entire coastline of Alaska, just because of the vast distances we’re talking about and the remote areas," Farrell says. "It would require response hubs in places where there’s no infrastructure whatsoever."

In a way, the storm is the first big test of this new program for cutting risk. If vessels meander too close to shore, Farrell says they’ll get a stiff warning.

Until then, ships will spend the rest of the weekend doing something they’re used to in the Bering Sea -- wishing for better weather.

KUCB's Annie Ropeik contributed to this report. This story has been updated to clarify new rules for cargo vessels under the alternative compliance program.

This is a developing story. Check back with KUCB for updates on the storm.