As Alaska’s rivers begin serving as winter roads and trails, a new study from the University of Alaska Fairbanks helps explain why certain stretches of water never seem to freeze. Researchers from UAF’s Water and Environmental Research Center, part of the Institute of Northern Engineering, conducted hydraulic modeling and analyzed a decade of satellite data […]
NOAA Fisheries works with communities, harvesters, and processors to navigate solutions in a pinch. The Alaska Bering Sea snow crab fishery is open for the first time in 2 years after a sharp decline in the crab population caused fishery closures. Participants have banded together with NOAA Fisheries to use regulatory flexibilities to help the […]
Rick Thoman noted in a recent report that the paucity of 2024-2025 snowfall in Anchorage and other Southcentral Alaska locations may be unprecedented in the era of modern records. “For the three locations with 50-plus years of snowfall data, both Anchorage airport and Alyeska had the lowest mid-winter totals, while the Matanuska Experiment Farm was […]
Pete Wilda, a Fairbanks reader of this column, wanted to know how the snow here can bend off railings and loop from power lines without breaking. He grew up in eastern Wisconsin and doesn’t remember the snow defying gravity there. Snow tilts and bends in Interior Alaska because there’s not much wind and because it’s […]