Traffic backed up in the snowy weather outside the Department of Public Safety after a collision Thursday. /Credit: Zac Schasteen, UDPS

Update, 6 p.m. Thursday: A blizzard warning is in effect for the Eastern Aleutians until tomorrow, and a Category 1 travel advisory remains in place in Unalaska.

The winter weather is making for some treacherous driving conditions in town.

A two-vehicle collision took place on the roadway below the Department of Public Safety this afternoon. Public Safety couldn't release any further details on that crash on Thursday.

The Arctic Hunter is still aground outside Unalaska. /Credit: Annie Ropeik

Work is progressing slowly on the grounded crab boat Arctic Hunter as salvagers plan how to pull it off the rocks.

The 93-foot vessel has been grounded outside Morris Cove since Nov. 1. The boat’s insurer is coordinating some of the operations that need to go on before the wreck removal can start.

Insurance adjustor Jim Ronning says last Friday, crews from Unalaska-based Mac Enterprises cleared some debris from the Hunter that had washed up on shore.

City council heard one last capital projects update from outgoing Public Works Director Nancy Peterson last night.

Peterson and her husband Jeff Hawley, the director of Parks, Culture and Recreation, are retiring next week.

Mayor Shirley Marquardt and all six councilors thanked Hawley and Peterson for six years of service to the city.

City council will start the budget planning process for 2015 at their first meeting of the new year tonight.

City manager Chris Hladick will discuss where the city will earn its money, and how much, in fiscal year 2015 with the council. The projected revenues next year are $34.8 million. It's more than the projections for this fiscal year, but about the same as the actual revenue in 2013.

A flatbed and a pickup truck had a head-on collision near the airport Wednesday. /Courtesy: Mike Holman, UDPS

A head-on collision next to the airport runway injured four people Wednesday morning. Two were medevacked to Anchorage.

Public Safety director Jamie Sunderland says the crash happened just after 10:30 a.m. on Ballyhoo Road at the end of the runway. He says a flatbed slid head-on into a pickup truck.

Sunderland says black ice on the road appears to have caused the crash.

The male driver of the flatbed was medevacked to Anchorage as a precaution, as was one man in the pickup truck. Two others in the pickup truck -- a man and a woman -- were taken to the Iliuliuk Family & Health Services clinic. Sunderland didn’t know details of their injuries.

Ron Moore uses a backhoe to clear away scrap at the landfill. /Credit: Annie Ropeik

The scrap metal pile at the Unalaska City Dump was cleared away this weekend.

It marks one of the last steps in a two-year-long project, in which about nine million pounds of scrap have been removed from the island.

“We’re just as busy as the first day," says Ron Moore of R.L. Moore Metal Recycling.

"It’s just a big job cleaning up this stuff, you know. It takes a lot of time. Patience.”

Ron Moore of R.L. Moore Metal Recycling loading junk at the landfill. /Courtesy: Shirley Marquardt

The last of nine million pounds of metal junk is being hauled away from Unalaska today.

R.L. Moore Metal Recycling company is finishing up loading the last of the junk at the landfill onto their barge.

It's the end of a nearly two-year project.

Public utilities director Dan Winters says the Virginia-based company has spent months in Unalaska since summer 2012. They’ve removed metal from Resolve Magone Marine Services’ scrapyard, plus the landfill and other areas in town.

A few of the 196 rock sandpipers tallied in the survey. /Courtesy Suzi Golodoff

Winter is running late in Unalaska this year -- and that was good news for the annual Christmas Bird Count last Saturday.

With such mild weather, the counters were able to tally the island’s birds in places they usually can’t get to.

In 22 consecutive years of the winter birds survey, organizer Suzi Golodoff says there’s never been so little snow on the ground on a count day.

The cast of the living nativity after the show. /Credit: Annie Ropeik

Kids at Unalaska’s United Methodist Church got to tell the story of Christmas in a unique way Wednesday.

It was the annual living nativity -- part holiday pageant, part Christmas service.

Fifteen elementary school kids from the congregation dressed up as wise men, shepherds and angels. They came forward as their parts in the story were told. There was even a baby playing Jesus.