The morning after a major storm passed over Unalaska, mechanic Dale Miller stopped into CarQuest auto supply. (Lauren Rosenthal/KUCB)

Predicting storms in a fast-changing environment isn’t easy.

But the National Weather Service is slowly working on a plan to improve their forecasts in Alaska -- and across the country -- by adding in the view from the ground.

Dale Miller has weathered a lot of storms since he moved to Unalaska 12 years ago.

Courtesy: City of Unalaska

Residents can hear the latest plans for cleaning up the Unalaska Lake watershed and weigh in again at a public meeting tonight.

Engineers and city officials heard hours of public comment at the city’s first forum on the project back in October. Since then, they’ve taken a closer look at how to improve salmon spawning grounds in watershed -- factoring in residents’ ideas and their million-dollar budget constraint.

In this illustration of ocean currents, white dots indicate where no cesium-134 was detected. Blue dots indicate locations were low levels of cesium-134 were detected farther offshore. /Courtesy: WHOI

Coastal Alaskans have been watching for signs of radiation from 2011’s Fukushima nuclear plant accident in Japan. Now, an oceanography institute says trace amounts have been detected off the West Coast. Radiation experts say the very low levels of measured do not pose a health threat here.

The post-earthquake and tsunami nuke plant accident spilled a large amount of radioactive contamination into the Pacific three years ago.

Newly discovered Yaya, bound in sea ice, is shown in this NASA image from June 2013. /Credit: NASA/Cryopolitics

Russia has been ramping up its military presence in the Siberian Arctic this fall. And they’ve had to do so around a new point on the map: a small island, discovered just south of the Northern Sea Route.

The speck of land was first spotted last year, by two helicopter pilots flying equipment north to the New Siberian Islands. The even newer island is known as Yaya -- the Russian word for I, repeated twice. That’s as in two pilots saying “I found it first,” according to Arctic news blog Cryopolitics.

An infrared image showing high temperatures on Pavlof Volcano's northwest flank, indicating lava flows. /Credit: Dave Schneider/AVO

After a day of intense eruption on the Alaska Peninsula, Pavlof Volcano has suddenly gone quiet.

Pavlof stopped putting out ash on Saturday evening, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory. Warnings for pilots to fly around the ash plume -- more than 35,000 feet high at its peak -- were canceled shortly after.

Since then, the AVO’s Dave Schneider says the ash has been dissipating over the Bering Sea. He says it’s pretty typical for a volcano to pause mid-eruption.

On Saturday, Pavlof's ash plume was at least 35,000 feet high, blowing for 250 miles out over the Bering Sea. /Credit: Dave Schneider/AVO

Update, 4 p.m. Saturday: Pavlof Volcano's ash plume has more than tripled in height since the eruption began -- and it's starting to affect air travel.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory is reporting ash at least 35,000 feet high, blowing for more than 250 miles out to sea from the volcano. That's prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to put trans-Pacific flights on watch.

Pilots have been asked to keep an eye out for ash near their flightpaths. They'll have to fly over it, or seek alternate routes to the south of the plume if they can't.

Eruptive activity at Pavlof, seen in Cold Bay on Nov. 12, 2014. /Credit: Carol Damberg

Pavlof Volcano is awake again on the Alaska Peninsula.

Pilots and residents in Cold Bay started seeing ash rising from the volcano on Wednesday. Now, the Alaska Volcano Observatory has confirmed that Pavlof is erupting.

"There is a minor amount of ash being thrown out, as high as possibly 9,000 feet," says lead scientist John Power. "And our satellite imagery indicates ... lava fountaining taking place at the summit of the volcano."

After a late-night squall, Unalaska saw clear skies Saturday morning. (Lauren Rosenthal/KUCB)

A potent low-pressure system is quickly losing power over the Bering Sea. 

From the western Aleutian Islands to the Pribilofs, National Weather Service meteorologist Shaun Baines says "everybody has seen the worst of it." 

"Originally, all indications were that this low was going to progress a little bit further into the Bering Sea before it slowed down," Baines says.

That would have made for rougher seas and higher winds near Adak and Atka. Instead, the storm stalled out in the southwest Bering Sea. 

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 Friday 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.

As the storm approached Friday morning, it became clear that it wouldn’t be entering the record books.