From Live Science
An extremely dangerous storm is slicing toward northwestern Alaska and is expected to bring blizzard conditions and hurricane-strength winds to the state’s west coast. The storm, which formed from a mix of air masses over an area of ocean prone to spinning up strong storms, could be bigger than anything ever seen in the 49th state, the National Weather Service warned.
…
The storm is the product of warm air in the Pacific Ocean tapping into the cold air off Siberia, picking up speed in a jet stream near there and then intensifying as it moved into the Bering Sea – “a place where storms typically intensify,” Brader told OurAmazingPlanet.
The weird storm has an unusually long fetch length, which is the length of the wind blowing in a single direction over water. In this case it’s maybe 1,000 miles (1,600 km), Brader said.
To envision what a long fetch length will do, think about blowing wind with your mouth over a bowl of water; the water piles up at the opposite end. The same thing happens over the ocean. The stronger and longer the fetch length, the bigger the waves it will create.
The winds from the current storm will push high waves ashore and create widespread coastal flooding and severe erosion of the coastline, the NWS warns. Sea levels could rise as much as 10 feet (3 meters) above normal in the Norton Sound and along the Bering Strait coast.
We all know that everything is attributable to global climate warming change disruption, so two points to the first commentor who can post a source attributing the storm or resulting flooding to our old friend…
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A news report of wind blown ice damage in Saginaw Bay Lake Huron March 10, 2009
From:
http://forecast.weather.gov/showsigwx.php?warnzone=AKZ211&warncounty=AKC180&firewxzone=AKZ211&local_place1=7+Miles+WNW+Solomon+AK&product1=Coastal+Flood+Warning
“MAJOR COASTAL FLOODING AND SEVERE BEACH EROSION WILL OCCUR OVER
ALL OF WESTERN ALASKA FROM CAPE ROMANZOF TO THE BERING STRAIT
THROUGH TODAY.”
From:
http://www2.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF7/729.html
“As most Alaskans know, most of the gold taken from Nome was found on the beach. Curiously, thousands of stampeders walked over it on their way to the creeks before they knew it was there.”
=========
Time to do some beachcombing in Alaska ?
The snow may prove to be a hindrance 🙂
@ur momisugly seraphim
You are right in regards to sea ice not being as far down as Nome in November. Looking at the anomaly chart for the Arctic ice then it is a fair bit north at this time of year.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_bm_extent_hires.png
@Anthony
Yet another example of what lowers google rankings. This article is probably 20:1 cut & paste from another website vs. original content.
The ice protects the coast in much the same way as a bulldozer protests a building it travels through.
Those of us in south central Alaska do watch these storms for a couple reasons. First is because they tend to dump some snow – of course most of it falls sideways due to the wind. Second is that in late December and January, they will occasionally bring rain statewide, trashing the snow while turning the entire place into a skating rink until the next couple of snow storms. This one is a bit early for that and varying amounts of snow are predicted. Cheers –
/sarc tag was eaten behind the first para of my last. Sorry –
@richard Holle….a rogue wave from a rogue moon.
Will this storm release the heat from that hot spot in front of Japan?:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
(One of the few hot spots remaining…..)
The approaching storm in the Bering Sea indeed may exceed the 100-year “design storm” intensity, to which standard many coastal structures on the west coast of Alaka have been built.
The “mega tsunami” that sheared off mature trees at elevations up to 1700 ft in Lituya Bay on July 9, 1958, however, was caused by a massive landslide at the head of an elongate bay. It had nothing to do with storm surge. By the time the wall hit open water, it was reduced by orders of magnitude. Because of rapid dispersion, it never registered on tide gauges around the Pacific Ocean, as would a true tsunami raised by the spatially more extensive displacement of a submarine earthquake.
Stop arguing about it guys, lets just sit back and enjoy the show.
The CAGWarmists who patrol Wikipedia in order to remove any entries that contradict their points of view do not always eliminate the research findings that conflict them. For example, the Niigata Prefectural Museum of History reported that Early Jomon sub-period period (Early Jomon (ca 4800-3000 BC) (Hamanasuno, Tochibara Rockshelter, Sannai Maruyama) coincided with an increase in world-wide sea levels and warmer mean temperatures than today. Core samples indicate the sea level was 2-3 metres higher than today; pushing the coastline well inland for the Kanto plain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dmon_period
Link to Niigata Prefectural Museum
http://www.nbz.or.jp/eng/early.htm
Then why are 1-2 mm increases/decreases of any import? Water goes up – water goes down.
Mark Serreze would seem to be the first person to blame the coming storm damage on global warming:
I first saw this comment by Serreze Tuesday evening.
Of course at this time of year sea ice is rapidly forming, making the difference year to year in when a certain level of sea ice coverage is reached a matter of a couple of weeks, so if “the Bering Sea will always have these strong storms,” it can certainly have them two weeks earlier, when “normal” ice coverage would be the same as today, meaning that we could just as well have the present combination of storm and ice conditions without the small amount of late 20th century global warming (which in any case is not significantly attributable to human activity).
Sorry if I missed someone else posting:
“Major damage had been forecast for Nome and for Kivalina, a village that has suffered severe erosion for years because declining sea ice has made it more vulnerable to storms — conditions scientists attribute to climate change.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/us/alaska-hit-by-powerful-storm.html
@Dave Springer
WUWT extends the climate news by providing a place where people from all over the world can comment, and also not be censored. It also provides a one stop shop for historical reference. I enjoy participating in discussions or just reading comments from others.
@ur momisugly DesertYote says:
November 9, 2011 at 1:14 pm
Curiousgeorge
November 9, 2011 at 5:37 am
###
Adak island during the early cold war, must have been interesting.
===================================================================
Yes, it was. Also boring as hell most of the time. Navy base & radar, etc. . There were about 1/2 dozen deaths due to weather while I was there. Blizzard/whiteout could come up very suddenly. However, the salmon fishing & crabbing were outstanding. 🙂
Just saw an ABC (US) World News piece, banging the global warming drum again. Apparently “once in a lifetime” weather events are happening every month, etc. (BTW, 2011 had the 2nd hottest summer on record, and I don’t recall being sent the memo about that.)
They featured Bill Patzert, a NASA climatoligist. In what sounded to me as a “creative” way to edit a damning sound bite, he said something like “Some scientists attribute this to global warming” and that’s where they cut it.
Strange. Back in June he said the wild weather was from “La Nada,” the lack of either a La Nina or El Nino letting the jet stream (Northern Hemisphere?) run wild:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/24jun_wildweather/
Michael S says:
November 9, 2011 at 3:54 pm
========
From your link:
…”A teacher at the McQueen School in Kivalina, Emma Knowles, said about 150 people had slept at the school on Tuesday night but that so far power had largely stayed on in village houses. She said there did not appear to be obvious flooding, but that the storm was still going strong. The school was providing food to residents.
“We’re doing pretty good,” Ms. Knowles said. “They’ve got a caribou going in the kitchen. I think they’re making caribou soup.”
“We’re just kind of hunkered down and watching the wind,” Ms. Knowles said. “And the kids are going crazy.”
======
No worries, one thing I have learned in my life, is that when you are way out in the wilderness your best hope for survival is a strong woman.
While we don’t know to what extent global warming is the cause of this storm’s intensity, we do know that storms of this size and intensity do significantly cool the Earth’s climate by transferring ocean heat into the atmosphere and poleward. Then there is the increased albedo from snow as this storm tracks east over land.
Next month should see a significant drop in North Pacific SSTs, feeding through into the global number.
u.k.(us) says:
November 9, 2011 at 1:41 pm
““As most Alaskans know, most of the gold taken from Nome was found on the beach. Curiously, thousands of stampeders walked over it on their way to the creeks before they knew it was there.”
=========
Time to do some beachcombing in Alaska ?
The snow may prove to be a hindrance :)”
UK,
The gold found on the alaskan beaches was (and is) ‘flour gold’. This is gold dust milled so fine from the glacial river outwashes that is ‘flour fine’. It can be difficult to extract from the sands, but specialized techniques were eventually developed to extract useful amounts. Beach combing on the AK coasts is more likely to find remnant wreckage from the Japanese tsunami than any easily collected gold nuggets.
On the topic of ‘Big Surf’, news today of a new unofficial world record for huge wave surfing: A surfer dude named Garrett McNamara rode a reported 90 foot rogue wave. Video links follow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2pvc9qfZ9U&feature=related
Ride the ‘knar’, AK surfer dudes and dudettes!!
Similar storm hit in 1911… here is pics:
http://vilda.alaska.edu/cdm4/results.php?CISOOP1=any&CISOBOX1=Storm&CISOFIELD1=CISOSEARCHALL&CISOOP2=all&CISOBOX2=1913&CISOFIELD2=date&CISOROOT=all&t=s
Mac the Knife says:
November 9, 2011 at 7:50 pm
=========
From:
http://nevada-outback-gems.com/prospecting_info/nome_gold.htm
“A number of individuals still mine and prospect the Nome area. During the summertime, visitors work the famous Nome beach Sands and recover a few ounces of fine flake gold. The best beach sand has high concentrations of Garnet and iron minerals, but the Garnet gives it a distinct deep red color. These concentrated zones are easy to recognize. There are also commercial suction dredging operations that work the beach deposits that are located offshore. In addition, the GPAA organization has its Alaska facility not far from Nome.”
——
I was just thinking the storm might concentrate the gold with its wave action, sorry for the facetious
comment.
The latest UW MM5-NAM 36km Domain, 72 hr computer forecast loop seems to suggest the formation of an Eastern Pacific high-pressure area in position to sweep cold air down the West Coast early next week.