U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps give you a choice on the height of Mount Isto. Depending on what map scale you choose, the mountain in the Brooks Range is either higher or lower than 9,000 feet. Using a new combination of techniques, an Alaska researcher has crowned Mt. Isto the highest peak in America’s arctic, […]
Eight summers ago, a bolt of lightning struck a dry tundra hillside in northern Alaska. Fanned by a warm wind that curled over the Brooks Range, the Anaktuvuk River fire burned for three months, leaving a scar visible from the International Space Station. The charred area was larger than Cape Cod. While northern Alaska’s treeless […]
On February 26 at 1:06 p.m., someone in northern Alaska may have seen a torch of light in the cold daytime sky. On that afternoon, satellites detected a meteoric fireball headed toward Earth. An asteroid six feet in diameter penetrated the atmosphere at 13 miles per second, piercing the protective shell of gases at a […]
The small community of Noatak awoke to a series of earthquakes originating in the Brooks Range on Monday morning. The first quake occurred at 3:38 am measuring a magnitude 3.1, it was generated at a depth of 10.6 miles 25 miles east of Noatak. A second quake occurred 22 minutes later at 4 am. This one […]