Warm Pacific helps typhoon remnants make an Ocean crossing from Japan to Alaska.
Meanwhile, Project 2025 strikes again, amplifying devastation in a Red State.
Five months before catastrophic floods swept through the Alaska Native village of Kipnuk on Sunday, tearing many houses off their foundations, the Trump administration canceled a $20 million grant intended to protect the community from such extreme flooding.
The grant from the Environmental Protection Agency was designed to help stabilize the riverbank on which Kipnuk is built, protecting it from the twin threats of erosion and flooding.
But in May, the E.P.A. revoked the grant, which was issued at the end of the Biden administration, saying it was “no longer consistent” with the agency’s priorities. Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, boasted on social media that he was eliminating “wasteful DEI and Environmental Justice grants,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and programs to help communities facing a disproportionate level of environmental threats.
It is unclear whether the work funded by the grant would have prevented the tragedy on Sunday, which left one person dead and two missing in the neighboring village of Kwigillingok. But the disaster laid bare the area’s vulnerability to flooding and the consequences of the Trump administration’s cuts to environmental programs.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said the flooding underscored the need for funding for underserved communities in the state. Earlier this year, Ms. Murkowski called on the Trump administration to ensure that funding for Alaska Native communities did not get swept up in the president’s opposition to D.E.I. initiatives.
“This administration prioritizes lowering costs — but minimizing the impacts of a disaster like this before it occurs is far cheaper than rebuilding afterward, to say nothing of the toll these events take on people’s lives,” Ms. Murkowski said in a statement. “Whether you call it climate change or ‘once-in-a-generation’ extreme weather, no community in the wealthiest country on earth should lack the basic infrastructure needed to keep its people safe.”
So what happened?
On the left, we see Halong, a Category 4 SuperTyphoon on October 7th. On October 11, we see it slipping west of the Aleutian Chain. Then it slammed into western Alaska as a powerful “extratropical”, or non-tropical cyclone.
The National Weather Service in Anchorage first mentioned the potential of a serious impact on October 7, and on October 8, wrote “Halong’s
remnants could deepen rapidly into an intense Hurricane force low.”
That’s exactly what happened. As Halong’s leftover center interacted with the jet stream, it metastasized into a potent comma-shaped mid-latitude cyclone of hurricane intensity in the Bering Sea. By the night of October 11, winds had gusted to 91 mph at St. George, a small settlement of 68 people on the remote Pribilof Islands. The next day, it hit Western Alaska, including the Seward Peninsula.
The National Weather Service in Anchorage had predicted ” Wind gusts of up to 80 mph will be possible across the Pribilof Islands as the center passes to the northwest.”
Toksook Bay then gusted to 100 mph, and Kusilvak to 107 mph! Interestingly, the strongest winds were out of the south, meaning this wasn’t a “sting jet” or anything – this was with a warm conveyor belt rushing into the storm from the south. That’s how quickly it was inhaling air!
Those southerly winds were unfortunately PERFECTLY aimed to give a serious surge to Kwigillingok. Kwigillingok sits right on the water, and there’s nothing to slow down or obstruct either the wind or the surge.
Nome gusted to 55 mph, with gusts of 65 to 75 mph along the shores of Norton Sound.
These strong winds piled water against the coast. In Nome, a surge of 5 feet was measured. But elsewhere, it’s likely that surge reached 6 to 8 feet between tidal sensors!
Typhoon Halong and Remnants Travel 5,000+ Miles! Typhoon Halong was first named a Tropical Depression on October 4th. Last week there was some impressive satellite visuals of Typhoon Halong to the southeast of Japan when it reached 135 mph intensity. On October 9th, Halong became an extratropical cyclone and that intense area of low pressure traveled across the Pacific slamming into Southwest Alaska on Sunday, October 12th. Hurricane-force wind gusts were reported as high as 100 mph.
Bob Henson and Jeff Masters in Yale Climate Connections:
Halong was a powerful typhoon that peaked well south of Japan on October 8 as the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane. Halong weakened quickly, its winds down to Cat 1 strength by October 9 as it recurved eastward before reaching the Japanese coast. By October 10, Halong was declared post-tropical.
Over the next several days, a strong upper-level jet curving around an intense upper low in the western Bering Sea caught the remnants of Halong and pivoted them in a huge loop, first eastward and then northward, reaching the Bering Sea by October 12 and coming ashore near Nome with a central pressure of around 964 millibars (hPa). The dynamical influence of the upper low, together with unusually warm sea surface temperatures over the far North Pacific (see Fig. 1), helped the remnants of Halong to re-strengthen.
