The F/V Cornelia Marie diverted to Unalaska today to avoid an oncoming storm. (Annie Ropeik/KUCB)
Update, 12 p.m.: The sun is shining today in Unalaska. But it’s a different story further west, where a high-powered storm system is touching down in the Aleutian chain.
Shemya reported the first heavy gusts from Typhoon Nuri this morning.
At around 97 miles an hour, they’re slightly stronger than predicted. But the island of Shemya is mostly unpopulated, besides a small Air Force station and some weather instruments.
Typhoon Nuri is expected to reach Shemya and Attu on Friday. (Courtesy of National Weather Service)
An Alaska-sized storm could bring high winds and destructive waves to the Aleutian and Pribilof islands this weekend.
"This low-pressure system is going to be the size of two-thirds of the United States," says Matthew Clay. He's been tracking the storm for the National Weather Service.
Right now, Typhoon Nuri is churning off the coast of Japan. It's been downgraded from a super storm. But Clay says it's going to gather steam once it hits the jet stream and starts traveling across the Pacific Ocean.
Adak Island is home to something you won’t find much of elsewhere in the Aleutians: a herd of caribou, introduced in the 1950s as a hunting option for the naval base. The base has since closed, but the caribou are still there -- and lately, some have been striking out for new pastures.
As KUCB’s Annie Ropeik reports, it’s got wildlife refuge managers looking to keep a herd from forming where hunters can’t follow.
The 40-odd residents of False Pass have waited years to find out if their turbulent seas could ever be used as a source of energy. Now, they may finally have an answer -- and a path to renewable power.
The Unalaska Lake watershed is prime spawning ground for salmon in the heart of the city’s historic downtown. It’s also some of the least healthy habitat in the Aleutian Islands.
Now, the city has a $1 million grant to clean it up -- but as KUCB's Annie Ropeik reports, residents are worried they’ll spend it on the wrong issues.
Subsistence users had a chance to weigh in on the watershed’s problems at a meeting with the city and its engineering consultants last week.
In the Bering Sea, it’s normal for pollock fishing to continue all the way up to Halloween. That’s what Krista Milani has seen in her time tracking the harvest for the National Marine Fisheries Service in Unalaska.
"I looked back several years, and that tends to be how it usually goes," Milani says.
But this season, the trawl fleet wrapped up a full month early thanks to an abundance of mature pollock.
Study facilitator Chris Beck looks over audience members' votes on what kind of seasonality changes they're seeing in Unalaska. (Annie Ropeik/KUCB)
Scientists know that the climate in the Aleutian Islands is changing. But they’re making observations from a distance -- while on the ground, the story is sometimes very different.
That’s what a team of researchers found earlier this month in Unalaska, when they talked to locals about the climate change they’re seeing in their own back yards.
About 40 people packed into Unalaska’s Museum of the Aleutians to answer a simple question: What abnormal changes have they seen in their local environment?
The Coast Guard and other agencies coordinate hypothetical clean-up efforts at the Grand Aleutian Hotel Wednesday. (Annie Ropeik/KUCB)
Coast Guard crews and local stakeholders are playing out a major hypothetical disaster in Unalaska this week. It’s part of a federal oil spill response drill that’s taking place in the Aleutians for the first time.
The drill is based on a worst-case scenario: a 500,000-gallon oil spill in the waters around the island, after a hypothetical landslide above North Pacific Fuel’s tank farm near Mt. Ballyhoo.
