Alaska storm prompts lessons in weather science from SIUE

When Alaska makes weather headlines, it’s usually for extreme cold or snow.

This time, it made headlines for a destructive storm that started as a typhoon.

One person was dead and two were missing in western Alaska on Oct. 13 after the remnants of Typhoon Halong last weekend brought hurricane-force winds, ravaging storm surges, and floodwaters that swept some homes away, authorities said. More than 50 people had been rescued — some plucked from rooftops.

The weekend storm brought high winds and storm surges that battered the low-lying Alaska Native communities along the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in the southwest part of the state, nearly 500 miles (800 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage.

“It was certainly a weather oddity. A typhoon is basically a hurricane with a different name, and it forms in the western Pacific,” said Dr. Alan Black, an associate professor and graduate program director in the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Sciences at SIUE.

“This typhoon initially formed around Oct. 3 off the coast of Japan, and it reached Category 4 strength, which gave it winds of 130 to 156 miles per hour.”

The typhoon, though, didn’t make landfall in Japan and instead tracked east away from Japan in the Pacific Ocean. It then move northeast toward Alaska.

“When the storm got to Alaska, it was no longer a typhoon, but just the remnants of it. Around the Edwardsville area, we don’t get hurricanes, but we get the remnants, and this is the same thing,” said Black, who discusses weather topics in a weekly story for The Intelligencer.

“During the storm in the western part of Alaska, where it made landfall, there were wind gusts of up to 100 mph. Several places recorded wind gusts of 90 mph, and other places recorded wind gusts of 70 mph or more.”

That was more than enough, Black explained, to cause significant flooding and potentially deadly or destructive wind damage.

“Along with the high wind came a lot of higher seas and high tides, and like what we see sometimes with a hurricane, there was a storm surge,” Black said. “The winds pushed the water onto land in some cases as much as 3- to 4-feet deep.

“That battered some of these villages that are right along the coast, and several homes washed out to sea. At least two dozen people were rescued by the Coast Guard when their homes were swept away. That has made the situation much more complicated in terms of rescue, relief, and evacuation.”

While flooding scenes are more common in the continental United States, Black added that storms like the one that struck Alaska last weekend are a rare but not unheard-of phenomenon.

“It’s not that strong storms can’t batter the Alaskan coast, and it does happen. But the fact that this started as a typhoon and then came to Alaska makes it somewhat unique,” Black said. “At least 1,500 people were driven from their homes, and unfortunately, one person was killed, and at least a couple more were listed as missing.

“These were very small villages that were hit, and all of them have populations under 1,000 people. One unique aspect of Alaska is that many of its villages are inaccessible by road, with the only means of access being by ship or plane.”

Black noted that in one village, 20 homes were swept away on a Saturday night.

“Because of the remoteness of these villages, the recovery will take a very long time,” Black said. “This storm was fueled by very warm Pacific Ocean water, and this happens occasionally in Alaska, but not often.

“Another typhoon caused damage along the Alaskan coast three years ago. Some storms are stronger than others, and they get more attention, but we’re not the only part of the world that can be affected by the remnants of these storms.”