Weather

The National Weather Service has changed the criteria for extreme cold weather advisories.

NWS Alaska meteorologist Tim Markle said the warnings are designed to let community members know when the cold weather presents a risk to the community. However, the old system set wind chill warnings and advisories, which were statewide in scope, and only kicked in when there was a wind chill.

“The current threshold statewide for a wind chill advisory, our old product, is minus 40,” Markle said. “The last time that we saw criteria like that in Anchorage, 1989. So you’re talking a once in a generation type advisory here, which we have realized is not an effective way of messaging.”

The new system updates advisories in two ways. The newly renamed extreme cold advisories and warnings no longer require a wind chill. And they’re regionally specific, instead of statewide. For example, Markle said an advisory in Anchorage would be at 25 below, and a warning would be 35 below.

“As we get closer to the coast, say along Prince William Sound the southern parts of the Kenai Peninsula, it’s maybe minus 15, minus 25,” Markle said. “And going even farther into Southeast Alaska, you’re getting closer to minus 10, zero to some places.”

Ideally, Markle said, an advisory would represent a level of extreme cold that a community sees once or twice a year, and a warning would mark temperatures a community sees maybe once every few years. He said since the new advisories and warnings were launched in the fall, they’ve been issued in Interior communities like Fairbanks and Ft. Yukon and Southeast communities like Haines.

NWS climate researcher Brian Brettschneider said keeping the advisories community-specific is important, since different cities are designed around different weather patterns.

“Cities are built for the climate that they’re in,” Brettschneider said. “And so our houses are built for it, our social services are built for it, our infrastructure is built for it. And so when you have, you know, an extreme level of cold, it’s impactful to somebody in the community.”

He said he’s hopeful that the new advisories will send a clearer picture to communities, especially more vulnerable residents, about when they should worry about cold weather.

Strong tidal action and fierce southerly winds inundated low-lying areas of the Kuskokwim Delta coastal community of Kwigillingok on Friday evening.

Michael Brown, with the National Weather Service in Anchorage, said that wind gusts as high as 55 miles per hour pushed waters well above the normal high tide line.

“When you combine 3 to 4 feet of extra water with a tide that’s already 2 feet above the normal high tide, we’re looking at 5 to 6 feet all of a sudden above the average high tide line. And that’s what we had,” Brown said.

According to Native Village of Kwigillingok Tribal Administrator Gavin Phillip, multiple boardwalks were submerged in the lower part of the community and water levels were on par with severe flooding seen in August 2024.

Phillip did not report any significant damage as of Sunday afternoon, but said that he had to act quick Friday to move his snowmachine and boat to higher ground.

“While me and my son were moving that boat, the tide was incoming and it was very swift. Maybe on a matter of half hour I almost lost my trail to home,” Phillip said. “Roughly maybe 27 homes were isolated.”

Phillip said that on Friday evening, the tribe put out the word on VHF radio and social media to residents of the low-lying areas to shelter in place until waters receded.

Phillip said that dozens of Orthodox followers observing Slaviq starring and feasting, including his wife, had to wait out the high waters in one community member’s home for around three hours. He said that both Slaviq celebrations and Moravian church services are on hold until a coastal flood advisory expires late Monday.

The community of roughly 600 people has grappled for decades with flooding, permafrost thaw and erosion of as much as 15 feet per year of the banks of the Kwigillingok River, which empties into the Bering Sea just below the community.

On Saturday Kwigillingok’s tribe joined Kipnuk in being among the first Alaska tribes ever to receive a federal disaster declaration from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for damage wrought by the August 2024 floods.

The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center raised over $30,000 in less than two days to rebuild an animal shelter after it was destroyed by high winds Monday. No animals were harmed.

The facility cares for injured and orphaned animals from across the state, like bison, caribou and muskox.

The Sitka black-tailed deer shelter was demolished by a windstorm that swept through much of Southcentral Alaska last week. Wind gusts in the Portage area peaked at 82 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

The center, about an hour south of Anchorage, launched a fundraiser Wednesday to raise $30,000 to rebuild the shelter, and they exceeded their goal in about 36 hours. The executive director, Sarah Howard, said she was blown away by the support.

“Just super gracious for everyone’s support in the help that we’re now going to be able to immediately start building on Monday,” Howard said.

Nearly $32,000 had been raised by Friday afternoon.

Photos posted by the facility Wednesday show the shelter’s roof completely detached and its walls scattered across the enclosure. The shelter is used during harsh weather, feeding, and as a recovery area for deer after medical procedures.

There are five deer at the center, and they’re known as the friendliest animals at the facility. Howard said the Sitka-deer have been on alert since the windstorm and have been hanging out in the back of their enclosure.

“They’re some of the friendliest animals we have on the property, but they’re also very aware of their surroundings,” she said. “I’m sure when this building started to creak and crack, that probably freaked them out quite a bit.”

There are an estimated 200,000 of the species in Alaska, concentrated in Southeast Alaska. It’s the most-hunted big game species in the region, according to Fish and Game. The average life-span of a Sitka black-tail is between 10 and 15 years.

How low can you go, really?

That’s one question Alaska researchers are asking of a new heat pump prototype this winter.

The new LG model purports to heat homes effectively even at -30 degrees Fahrenheit, and may soon do so for hundreds of residents in northern Alaska.

Along with installing solar power systems and battery storage, heat pump deployment was one of three major components of a $55 million U.S. Department of Energy grant awarded to the Northwest Arctic Borough back in February.

That deployment is to the tune of 850 air source heat pumps installed in 11 different villages.

But before that grant-funded rollout begins, the borough must select which model to deploy. That means generating data and crunching numbers, said Ingemar Mathiasson, the Northwest Arctic Borough’s energy manager.

“We have now a test going on with an LG heat pump … that can go down to 30-, 40-below, and still produce 70 degrees inside the house,” Mathiasson said, referring to temperatures measured in degrees Fahrenheit. “And we’re gonna test one of those here through the rest of the winter. We’re installing it pretty quick here, and there’s also one in Fairbanks that’s being installed over there by NREL.

A few hundred miles southeast of Mathiasson, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Chief Scientist Tom Marsik walked to the corner of a classroom on the second story of the lab’s main building. He pointed out the window.

“You can see it right here,” Marsik said as his footsteps echoed on the hard floor. “So that’s the outside unit of the heat pump,” he added, directing his gaze at a microwave-sized metal box with a fan on its backside.

Then his attention moved away from the snow-covered scenery outside the window.

“We can see the indoor unit hanging here on the wall, the indoor unit of the heat pump. We can see lines connecting it, going through the wall, connecting it to the outside unit,” he said.

A 6-foot collapsible table stood between Marsik and the eggshell-colored indoor unit. Some hand tools and wire were scattered across the table’s surface.

The setup wouldn’t look out of place in the garage of an avid do-it-yourselfer, but it’s exactly where the testing is happening this winter that will help determine whether – and how – the Northwest Arctic Borough will go about putting in and using hundreds of new heat pumps in the coming years.

“We are evaluating the preferments of this heat pump, so they can decide, is it really the model they want to use? And if so, then we can also provide guidelines for how to potentially operate it in the most beneficial way,” Marsik said.

Marsik explained that the technology works by capturing heat from the air – however cold the air may seem – and then sending it inside to warm up a space. The process is like refrigeration – which removes hot air from an enclosure to keep it cool – but in reverse.

“The coil of the outside unit is colder than the outside environment, that’s how it can extract the heat from that because heat flows, heat flows from hot to cold,” he said.

Heat pumps aren’t exactly new. In some fashion, they’ve been a part of the home-heating picture since the 1960s. But the technology is evolving, working at colder and colder temperatures, an earlier this year, the MIT Technological Review listed heat pumps as one of the 10 breakthrough technologies of 2024.

The LG prototype at NREL is designed to operate down to temperatures about 10 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the backup model for the Northwest Arctic Borough’s project, which is a Mitsubishi heat pump.

But, Mathiasson, the energy manager, said that capability could come with its own set of limitations the borough needs to assess before making a final selection on the model.

“It’s a new variation to be able to go down into the lower temperatures, but they also draw more power, so we want to measure how efficient they are and how well they can substitute for a Toyo stove or boiler in the house,” Mathiasson said.

That’s where the testing comes into play.

Throughout the Fairbanks winter, Marsik and others will keep tabs on how the LG prototype responds to natural fluctuations in the temperature outside. Also, to mimic differing levels of building insulation, they’ll pit the heat pump against a portable air conditioner that will run incrementally in the room. The U.S. Department of Energy is funding the $130,000 testing project.

“So we have put a bunch of sensors on the indoor unit and the outdoor unit to measure how much electrical energy we are putting into it and also how much heat this heat pump is supplying into this environment,” Marsik said.

Whichever model makes the cut, Mathiasson expects the installation of heat pumps to get underway this summer in villages already converted to renewable-centric microgrids.

“So that’s Shungnak and Kobuk and Noatak and Deering,” he said.

The heat pumps will then be deployed to the other villages, but only after their microgrids introduce solar power and battery storage to offset some diesel in the production of electricity.

“If you put heat pumps into the communities without the renewables, you’re actually going burn more diesel,” Mathiasson said, adding he expects the conversion to be complete by 2029.

Although their efficiency can decrease in extreme temperatures, heat pumps can generate about three to four times as much energy in the form of heat as they use in electricity. That’s why advocates say they’ll prove a critical tool for global decarbonization efforts.

The International Energy Agency says heat pumps currently supply about 10% of the world’s heating demand. To keep pace with the Net Zero by 2050 scenario, the IEA estimates that supply would need to hit 20% by 2030.

Upfront capital costs remain one of the bigger roadblocks for heat pumps, and after years of growth, global heat pump sales dropped by 3% in 2023.

But, in Alaska, 2024 held a couple policy-related developments for the technology. There’s the pending Northwest Arctic Borough rollout, and there’s the $39 million federal grant announced in July to help homeowners in Southcentral and Southeast Alaska purchase heat pumps.

So, for Mathiasson, at least, “It’s definitely the year of heat pumps for Alaska.”

When Rick Thoman looked ahead to 2024, one big project was on his list. The veteran climate specialist set his sights on updating 2019’s widely-distributed “Alaska’s Changing Environment” report, posted online by the International Arctic Research Center.

“This report is now more than four years old; it’s still getting thousands of unique hits a month on the IARC website,” Thoman said. “And so that told us that this kind of report had enduring value to people in Alaska and beyond.”

IARC teamed up with the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Thoman’s employer, the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy.

More than 35 people were brought on to contribute to the project — double the number of the first version. Key contributors like IARC’s Brian Brettschneider returned to the project while several new names entered the mix.

The cover, an aerial shot of a 2023 landslide in Wrangell that killed six people, sets a poignant tone for the report. As the name suggests, Alaska’s environment is changing — and its creating new challenges for Alaskans. Thoman said the wording of the title was intentional.

“We specifically did not want ‘Alaska’s Changing Climate’, because the impacts of that changing climate are what people really feel,” Thoman said. “Those are the kinds of things that impact people, and they impact our land and our resources right down to what’s for dinner tonight.”

To help a wide audience understand those changes, sections like winter precipitation begin with the broad statement, “most of Alaska is seeing more mid-winter snow.” Typically, such statements are followed up with a very simple explanation like, “This increase is driven by warmer temperatures that enable air to hold more water vapor.”

Thoman said he worked in tandem with ACCAP’s science communications lead, Heather McFarland, to break things down to the simplest terms.

“Heather will go through and say, ‘That’s jargon, I don’t understand this,’ ‘Oh, that’s good,’” Thoman said. “Heather will do that with text from other experts as well, to get that into the style that you see there.”

While not new, Indigenous voices are now sprinkled throughout the report. The insights provide anecdotal evidence of the changing environment, like a story shared by Seldovia’s Stephen Payton.

“Elders also say to wait to pick until after first frost, but now the berries are ripe before that point,” Payton shared at an Alaska Berry Futures listening session.

These changes are prompting questions about how Alaskans should respond, both at the local and legislative levels.

“We certainly hope and expect that this information will help to inform some of those discussions, because we’re providing this information in a non-technical way that anybody that’s interested can get to,” Thoman said.

Printed copies of “Alaska’s Changing Environment 2.0” are headed to the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in Washington D.C next week. Digital and web versions are available at IARC’s website.

Snowfall is expected across Southeast Alaska this week, starting tonight. But Juneau may be hit the hardest.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory for the city from 6 p.m. Monday through 3 a.m. Wednesday, calling for 8 to 14 inches of snow.

Meteorologist Nicole Ferrin says snowfall is not expected to be especially wet or heavy, but it will be sustained over the next couple of days. Several bands of moisture are expected to stall over Juneau, and frigid air pouring in from Taku Inlet and Icy Strait will keep it cold enough for dry snow.

“It’s a 36-hour-long event so the totals are more reflective of how long we expect to see the snow accumulation,” Ferrin said.

The incoming snow is thanks to the collision of a low pressure system that’s gathering moisture over the northern Gulf of Alaska and a high pressure system over the Yukon, which has sustained dry conditions, clear skies and frigid temperatures across the panhandle over the last week.

Ferrin says the snowfall forecast could change as the storm hits. As snow begins this afternoon, forecasters expect more dry, fine crystals that won’t pile up much.

“But usually as the storm evolves the snowflake type will change and be able to accumulate a little bit better,” she said. ”

For now, the forecast calls for 3 to 5 inches overnight on Monday with an additional 3 to 5 inches throughout the day Tuesday.

Snowfall should be less severe outside of Juneau. Skagway, Haines, Sitka, Wrangell, Petersburg, Ketchikan and Prince of Wales Island may see more brief pockets of snow, with accumulations ranging from 1 to 4 inches over the next couple of days and the potential for freezing drizzle.

The storm already started to hit Yauktat as of this morning, but slightly warmer than expected temperatures there created a rain-snow mix.

Warmer temperatures expected mid-week may slow snow accumulations temporarily, but some less intense snowfall is still likely, and temperatures are expected to  Winter weather conditions might make travel hazardous.