Interior

The National Weather Service’s Alaska-Pacific River Forecast Center says the Yukon, Tanana, Koyukuk, Kuskokwim and Susitna basins all have more snowpack than usual — and some are well above normal.

“We are having some of these basins with record snowfalls being reported,” says Karen Endres, a senior hydrologist with the weather service’s Fairbanks office.

Endres said in an interview Friday that it’s too early to say whether data from sensors up in higher elevations accurately reflect the entire snowpack in those basins. That will have to be confirmed by overflights and other analyses to be conducted next month.

“We aren’t sure exactly what we’ve got up there,” she said, “but that’s our best guess right now — that we are sitting on a very large snowpack.”

The River Forecast Center says the Tanana Basin, which includes Fairbanks and Delta Junction, registered the greatest above-normal snowpack — about 220% more than usual. The Upper Yukon, in Canada, had about 160% of median; the Middle Yukon, which includes Eagle and Circle was at 190% of normal; and the Lower Yukon, including Ruby and Galena, was at 150% of normal.

“We are concerned with pretty much all of the forecast area,” Endres said.

But snowpack isn’t the only indicator of flooding potential. She says river-ice thickness is another, although so far the data show that’s about normal.

Another indicator is the onset of warmer-than-normal temperatures in late breakup that could trigger rapid melting of snowpack. But Endres says long-term forecasts are inconclusive on whether that might happen.

“Until we get those April numbers that confirm how much snow is up there, and better numbers for what the temperatures might do, we don’t make any real predictions,” she said.

Climate expert Rick Thoman agrees it’s too soon to draw conclusions from data available so far.

“I think the short answer is that at this point, we’re just going to have to wait and see,” says Thoman, a climate specialist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy.

He says the weather service’s Alaska Climate Prediction Center forecasts a small chance of cooler-than-normal temperatures in April around the eastern Interior. But he said in Friday’s ACCAP climate outlook webinar that conditions could change by mid-month.

“So if it’s really cold the first two weeks of the month and then temperatures pop up in the second half of April to slightly above normal,” he said, “we could still have a rapid transition to thawing weather in late April and early May.”

Thoman says cooler weather throughout April would help slow the melting of all that snow up in the mountains.

The National Park Service is moving forward with a plan to fix a part of the road in Denali National Park and Preserve that has been made impassable by an accelerating landslide.

The plan, which was approved earlier this week, involves building a bridge across the Pretty Rocks landslide, more than forty miles along the Park Road. Twenty-five million dollars in funding for the project comes from the federal infrastructure bill that passed late last year.

The Pretty Rocks landslide has caused increased road maintenance issues and safety concerns in recent years. The landslide has been speeding up, meaning the methods that worked to keep the road passable in the past are no longer working.

Construction on the project is expected to begin this year, and the National Park Service says the work will be done on an accelerated timeline. Until that work is complete, the western parts of Denali National Park will not be accessible by road.

Visitors this summer will still be able to see part of the park via the road, however. Denali National Park plans to keep the first forty-three miles of the road open.

Workers tore down the building that housed Delta Junction’s only grocery story Monday, nearly three months after its roof collapsed under the weight of an extreme snow load. The owner plans to build a new store in the same location.

The old IGA Food Cache had been boarded-up since its roof partially collapsed on Dec. 26 after a heavy snow and rain storm. So when heavy equipment began demolishing the 50-year-old structure Monday morning, it caught locals like Lori Yates by surprise.

“Well, look at this! This is unbelievable!” she said as she watched the demolition.

By mid-afternoon, all that was left was a pile of rubble.

Store General Manager Jeff Lisac says that as soon it’s hauled away, work will begin on a new store.

“We’re definitely rebuilding,” he said in an interview at the site Monday. “We’re going to build a better store than we had. Everything will be brand new inside of it.”

That’s necessary because almost all of the inventory and equipment in store, including some new freezers they’d just installed, were too damaged to salvage.

“Couldn’t save anything in here,” he said, “so, the shelving, everything has to be replaced.”

Lisac says there’s no official dollar estimate of the damage yet. He says store owner Ed Larson is still working on insurance claims and other issues. They’ve also have had to work around supply-chain issues and the high cost of materials like the type of steel used for shelving.

Lisac says it’ll take a year for the new shelving to be delivered. So the new store will be set up with a more basic temporary system.

Meanwhile, Larson has been serving customers with a sort of mini-grocery set up in his liquor store next door. It’s pretty limited, but customers like Monica Gray say it helps fill the gap left by the loss of the town’s only grocery store.

“It’s nice to have stuff in the liquor store, but I mean, it’s not a grocery store,” she said.

Gray says it’s better than trying to buy staples from the two convenience stores in town, which run out of inventory pretty quickly these days.

“No milk, no eggs. You know, it’s like there’s usually a dozen eggs down at the gas station,” she said, adding, “because you don’t want to have to buy it at the gas station — until that’s the only place to get ’em!”

Gray says her family hasn’t had to deal with that because her dad is retired military and can shop at the commissary on Fort Greely. But most folks, like Peter Osipchuk, don’t have those privileges. So they’re driving a hundred miles to shop in Fairbanks.

“Right now, we more, go to Fairbanks (to) buy more food,” he said during a quick stop at the store.

Bruce Smith says he’s OK with buying his groceries at Larson’s liquor store.

“You can get a lot of stuff here — most of it, anyway,” he said.

Smith is a trucker, and he often picks up groceries after making a delivery. He says that’s better than driving the icy Richardson Highway to get to stores in traffic-congested Fairbanks.

“We’ll stop at Three Bears in Tok and get a lot of stuff instead of having to deal with Fairbanks and the nightmare road.”

Lisac says that if all goes well, the new IGA Food Cache may open in the fall.

Victoria Shestopalov says she began worrying about loved ones in Ukraine a few weeks ago, when the Russian military was conducting large training exercises near the Ukrainian border. She says when she called to check in, they reassured her all was well.

“We have family in Kharkiv, and then we have family in Kyiv, and then spread out in small villages as well,” she said. “And they said, ‘It will be OK, everything’s going to be OK. No one’s panicking.’”

But when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent tanks into Ukraine a couple of weeks ago, Shestopalov says her worst fears had come to pass.

“And then,” she said, “just all of a sudden, it kind of just happened. And, yeah, we were all very crushed with the news.”

Since then, Shestopalov says she and many other members of Delta Junction’s Slavic community have been trying to monitor the situation in Ukraine and keep in touch with those who are still there.

“It really breaks our heart,” she said. “It’s really touched us. I didn’t realize that I would feel this way. It’s just happening — in the 21st century. It’s just unbelievable.”

Shestopalov’s family was among the first in a wave of refugees that began arriving in Delta Junction in the 1990s. They came from Russia and Ukraine and other nations in the former Soviet Union’s orbit, many looking for a place where they’d be free to worship according to their conscience.

The Slavic community here now constitutes about a fifth of the area’s population. And Shestopalov says they’re united against the war in Ukraine.

“I know the Russian people don’t this war to be happening,” she said. “Our friends from Russia are reaching out — actually, all over Europe. Nobody wants this to be happening.”

Shestopalov’s dad is Ukrainian. Her mom was born in Finland but moved to Estonia, where Shestopalov was born. And her husband is Russian. She says some members of her family are now wondering whether their country will be the next to be attacked.

“I spoke to my cousin in Finland, which is right there. She said Finland is on pins and needles. They are prepared. They are ready to act,” she said.

Delta Junction’s Slavic community also is ready to act, says Diana Gelever. Her family is one of those that came to Delta Junction from Ukraine back in the 1990s.

“A couple of the ladies in our church have been reaching out to family in Ukraine,” said Gelever, a member of the Word of Life Church in Delta Junction.

And she says the responses that fellow congregants have been getting from family members in the old country are heart-breaking.

“There are people just hiding in bunkers and underground, in the subway and stuff,” she said. “And there are children down there, others, pregnant women, some men here and there, as well. And they’ve just been reaching out, (saying) that they have nothing. And they’re scared.”

To relieve the suffering, the Slavic community has been sending donations directly to family and friends in Ukraine and neighboring countries. And Gelever says members of the church have launched a weeklong garage sale and bake sale to raise money for the cause.

“They’re baking as many goods that they can,” she said. “They’re trying to sell as much as they can as fast as they can to get the money out there as soon as possible to help those who need it.”

Iditarod rookie Bridgett Watkins and her sled dog team were cruising through a flat section of trail near Fairbanks a few weeks ago on a training run when she spotted a moose.

At first, she said, it sauntered toward her team. Then it charged.

“The next thing I knew, he was running full speed straight at me,” recalled Watkins. “And I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is really happening.’”

She was holding a small .380 handgun. It was enough to slow it, she thought, but not enough to kill. She aimed, took a deep breath and unloaded a few shots straight at the moose’s chest. It didn’t even flinch.

Watkins ducked behind her sled just as the moose started trampling her team. Watkins said she was able to cut some of her dogs loose, but couldn’t free all of them. And each time she moved, the moose seemed to get angrier.

She’d never seen a moose act like that in her decades of mushing.

“That moose had a look in his eye that he just wanted death to occur,” she said. “He just wanted to kill.

She was stuck there for nearly an hour until a snowmachiner arrived and killed the moose.

Biologist say aggressive moose like the one that attacked Watkins’ team are more common this winter in Interior Alaska because of, in part, a combination of deep snow and rain.

“The number of incidents between moose and people or moose and dog teams or moose and dogs is definitely higher this year than I’ve seen,” said Tony Hollis, an area biologist in Fairbanks for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Mushers have reported encounters so close that the moose scraped the hair off of their dogs. The moose have thwarted training runs. A few weeks ago, a musher near Cantwell reported killing two aggressive moose that charged his team. Mushers also say they’ve seen moose calves that looked near death from hunger.

Extreme rain and snow in December is the culprit, biologists say. Just before Christmas, the Interior was hammered by more than a foot of snow, followed by 2 inches of rain, followed by another foot of snow.

That made travel arduous for the pencil-legged moose, forcing them onto pre-packed trails that dog teams also like. The moose are ornery from frequent run-ins with recreators, and predators like wolves have been pestering them, biologists say. They’re hungry and aggressive.

Hollis said moose encounters have even sent a few people to the hospital this year with serious injuries.

“I know of one of them, the person had multiple breaks in their leg,” he said.

Lately, reports of aggressive moose have spread south, including into areas that Iditarod mushers will pass through.

Southcentral has been hammered by heavy snow mixed with rain over the last few weeks, and especially heavy snow fell around Willow, where the race starts.

“We got about 3 feet of snow in like a week, and now the moose don’t want to get off the dog trail. And they’re starting to get violent,” said Iditarod veteran Lev Shvarts, who lives and trains in Willow.

Biologists in Southcentral echo that sentiment, saying they’re starting to hear of more encounters in the past week. Shvarts said he’s taking precautions while training for the upcoming Iditarod, like asking friends for snowmachine escorts through the areas with a lot of moose.

As for Watkins, she said the memories of the attack are still with her.

“There’s been many panic attacks, like legit, ” she said, “The dogs, for the most part, seem completely unfazed.”

She said her injured dogs are recovering well after their surgeries. Many of the dogs that were part of the team will be on the start line with her on Saturday.

She’ll be there, too, carrying a bigger gun.

The Army has confirmed that 11 Alaska-based soldiers died by suicide in 2021. Six of the soldiers were based at Ft. Wainwright, and five were at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson. The deaths of another six Alaska soldiers, five of whom were Ft. Wainwright-based, are under investigation.

That compares to seven deaths by suicide in 2020 and eight in 2019.

Speaking with reporters, U.S. Army Alaska commander Major General Brian Eifler said suicide prevention is his number one priority.

“We’ve got a lot of things going on in the world right now. A lot of things that we’ve got to pay attention to, but this is what’s hurting our soldiers, so we’ve got to figure it out,” he said.

Ft. Wainwright has one of the highest suicide rates among U.S. Army posts. And while military suicides have been climbing nationwide in recent years, Eifler said Alaska’s extreme environment can magnify mental health challenges.

“So maybe a small problem in the Lower 48 would be big problem here,” he said.

Eifler reflected on a 2019 Ft. Wainwright suicide study that gave rise to mental health and quality of life initiatives, including over $200 million in facility upgrades.

“Obviously and tragically we still have long road ahead of us,” he said.

Eifler focused on a list of suicide prevention measures, including a campaign to keep soldiers better connected.

“Leaders connected with the soldiers and soldiers connected with each other. Leaders contact a hundred percent of our soldier’s spouse or next of kin. A hundred percent of our soldiers will get a wellness check from behavioral health or the military family life counselor,” he said.

Eifler said many of the deaths happen during a soldier’s first year in the state. He highlighted a new Army climate that encourages reaching out.

“Every week, every week we have people coming forward and saying hey, first sergeant, I’m really struggling here, and here’s my weapon, take my weapon away from me. I need some help,” he said.

Eifler said the goal is to normalize mental health care within the ranks. He also pointed to a new initiative to identify soldiers who are a good fit for Alaska and to bring and keep them here.