Near hurricane-strength winds blasted parts of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands as the remnants of Typhoon Nuri moved through the remote region hundreds of kilometres from the mainland.
Sustained winds of 112 km/h and gusts up to 154 km/h were recorded Friday morning on Shemya Island, where 120 people had locked themselves indoors to wait out the storm.
The island is home to the U.S. military’s Eareckson Air Station, which serves mainly as an early warning radar installation. Acting manager Don Llewellyn said no one was going outside, but people can see light poles waving.
But toward evening, the winds had eased enough to allow personnel to get outside and check for any storm damage, said Tommie Baker, public affairs officer for the Alaskan Command.
‘It’s going to slowly weaken all the way through Sunday. It’s going to be a very slow process.’- Meteorologist Jason Ahsenmacher
“A couple of the buildings had some minor damage, but there were no injuries,” he said. “They are going to let it pass through a little bit more and (then) go out and do a full island assessment.”
He estimated that by 5 p.m. Friday, sustained winds had dropped to 72-104 km/h with gusts of 128 km/h.
The brunt of the storm is expected to pass into the Bering Sea and lose strength, but forecasters warned it will still push unseasonably frigid air into much of the U.S. next week.
“It’s going to slowly weaken all the way through Sunday,” National Weather Service meteorologist Jason Ahsenmacher said. “It’s going to be a very slow process.”
Forecasters said waves could be as high as 15 metres, prompting ships and fishing vessels to get out of the storm’s path or seek protected harbours.
Ahsenmacher said late Friday night that he hasn’t heard of any problems regarding shipping.
“Most mariners know about this storm and they are trying to stay away,” he said.
The storm was expected to surpass the intensity of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy and has the potential to be one of the most intensive to ever hit the North Pacific, meteorologists said. But while Sandy was blamed for at least 182 deaths and $65 billion US in damage on the East Coast, Nuri’s target is a sparsely populated region with just a few small communities where people are accustomed to severe weather.
Friday’s high temperature was 4 C in Shemya, which is in a sub-polar region that doesn’t get the same bitter cold as Alaska’s interior. But the island 2,400 kilometres southwest of Anchorage gets plenty of extreme weather, including 160 km/h winds. The community averages six weather-related lockdowns a year, Llewellyn said.
“This is nothing new to us,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “This one’s a little bit more intense, but it’s something that we’re prepared to deal with.”
The system is expected to freeze much of the lower 48 states next week, forecaster Bruce Sullivan said. Snow also is coming to areas including the northern Rockies and northern Plains.
In Great Falls, Montana, the high temperature is predicted to be -8 C on Tuesday, compared with the normal high of 6, Sullivan said. The forecast for Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is a high of -3, which is about 6 degrees below normal. High temperatures in Minneapolis will only reach around -7 or -6.
Amid prospects that the storm could dip into the upper Midwest, National Weather Service meteorologist Gino Izzi in Chicago offered a warning to that region’s populace: Winter is about to hit, sooner there than usual.
Izzi said highs there are expected to settle around the freezing mark from Tuesday through Friday, while nightly lows could drop into the -6 range or lower.
“It doesn’t look real promising for a warmup after that, either,” he said of the longer-range forecast that meteorologists hadn’t sorted out by Friday.
Colder than average temperatures
In Sioux Falls, weather service meteorological technician Tim Masters said temperatures will be colder than average but won’t break any records.
“We’ve been above normal most of the fall, so this is our first shot going the other way being below normal,” he said. “Basically, this is a wakeup call that this is November and it can get pretty cold this time of year. Hopefully we don’t stay that cold very long.”
In the Aleutians, the storm’s path includes a busy maritime route for cargo ships travelling between the U.S. and Asia, as well as the red king crab fishery made famous by the Discovery Channel reality show “Deadliest Catch.” Mariners were finding protected harbours or moving away from the path, according to Brett Farrell with the nonprofit Marine Exchange of Alaska. No one in their right mind would stick around that area, he said.
Officials are also closely watching the western coast of Alaska’s mainland, according to Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman for the state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Fall storms routinely batter many coastal communities, and erosion has long been a problem.
