High winds pummel Nome and the Bering Strait region

The Norton Sound region was windswept this past weekend, with a windstorm kicking up road dust and pushing waves back from the coast. On Saturday water levels logged at their lowest since recording began in the 1990s, according to UAF Climate Specialist Rick Thoman.
All that wind over the eastern Bering Sea pushed the tide back, and on Saturday, October 12, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ocean level gauge at Nome measured at 7.9 feet below  the low tide line, the lowest level recorded since it was installed in the 1990s. The previous lowest level of 6.9 feet below the low tide line was recorded in Nome on Christmas Day 2022.
Late last week, a low-pressure system traveled across the Southern Bering Sea, north of the Aleutian Islands. At the same time a high-pressure system was moving across the Chukotka peninsula, west of the Bering Strait and a high-pressure front moved across the North Slope. This developed a weather front on Friday afternoon that “exploded,” said Thoman, rapidly deepening the pressure and intensifying winds across the eastern and central Bering Sea.
Even as the main low that brought the winds weakened, the high pressure over in Chukotka and on the North Slope held, which kept the wind blowing through the weekend.
On Saturday, gusts of 57 mph were logged at the Nome Airport and at Gambell.
Brevig Mission and Teller’s automatic weather stations both went down during the storm on Saturday around noon, but before they did, wind speeds of 60 mph were recorded in Brevig.
Wales also saw high windspeeds of 60 mph.
In Unalakleet, wind highs only briefly reached 30 mph, averaging around 15 mph Saturday.
None of these villages responded to requests for situation reports.
Bering Air halted their operations on Saturday, with no flights in or out.
Ryan Air saw no impact, except slight delays. “The winds were close to the limit, never above it,” said Ryan Air Stations Director Justin Polayes.
On Saturday, the Nome Police Department received a call about parts of a roof blowing off a building on Front Street, an officer went to investigate and found the debris was blowing onto the beach side, not onto the road and no damage was done. NPD had no other reports of damage.
Any Nomeite brave enough to venture over the beach as the wind was howling this weekend would be met with an extended shoreline and exposed subaquatic structures that haven’t seen the light in years.
Cars zipped around on the wide beach, littered with washed up fish forming frost next to starfish stuck like stickers in the former seafloor. Many took to the shore to hunt for unusual treasures and get a perspective of Nome usually only accessible by sea ice.
One metal structure protruded from the ground near Middle Beach, a caisson from the early 1900s. Used to help bring cargo to shore, the remains were rusted and half-submerged in the sand. A piece of Nome’s history, finally caught wind after years at sea.

With reporting from Laura Robertson