An "epic" storm is bearing down on western Alaska, the National Weather Service said, warning that it could be one of the worst on record for the state.
The city of Nome, one of the largest in western Alaska with 3,600 residents, issued an evacuation order late Tuesday with the storm, moving inland from the Aleutian Islands, expected to bring hurricane-force winds with gusts up to 100 miles per hour.
Heavy snowfall, widespread coastal flooding and severe erosion is also expected along most of Alaska's west coast, the National Weather Service said.
The storm caused a dramatic rise in sea levels, an upsurge of more than 3 feet, National Weather Service meteorologist Stephen Kearney in Fairbanks said.
Officials have said the water is expected to rise another 7 feet overnight. Reports of heavy flooding are expected Wednesday morning, Kearney said.
"This will be an extremely dangerous and life-threatening storm of an epic magnitude rarely experienced," the NWS said in a special warning message.
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'Take it seriously'
By late Tuesday night, the storm had reached Nome, bringing 60 mph winds and snow, reducing visibility to just a quarter mile, Kearney said. Phone circuits to Nome rang busy late Tuesday.
Scott Johnson, 28, a Nome banker, said he loaded a couple of bags into his truck and got gas so he's ready to go.
"If there are 30-foot waves, A, they might be coming over the sea and B, they might be coming into my apartment," he said.
"The general view out here is we get storms like this on a fairly regular basis," Johnson said. "We kind of shrug it off. But when the National Weather Service is trying to sound an alarm with 30-foot seas and this is a rare storm, take it seriously. I think they're taking it seriously with a grain of salt."
The windows were boarded up Tuesday morning at the Polar Caf?, a popular restaurant that faces the ocean in Nome.
"It is blowing sideways snow. The water hasn't really come up much yet but it is starting to," said waitress Andrea Surina.
Seventy miles north of Nome in the village of Brevig Mission, teacher AnnMarie Rudstrom had made plans to move her family to higher ground from their home on a spit separating the village lagoon and the ocean. The ocean by afternoon had started to churn in shades of gray.
"It's pretty ominous looking and the waves are getting bigger," Rudstrom said.
Officials in Nome issued the evacuation order for people living along Front Street, a beachside avenue that serves as the finish line for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and for other low-lying areas in town.
Nome and the rest of the Seward Peninsula, a section of land that juts out toward Siberia, were expected to be the hardest-hit areas, according to the National Weather Service in Anchorage.
Residents in shelters
At least three other communities were housing residents in local shelters as of Tuesday afternoon, said Bryan Fisher, chief of operations for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
But long-distance evacuations from the remote region were not considered feasible, Fisher told a media briefing in Anchorage.
"Air traffic will not be flying in the weather that we're expecting in the next 24 to 48 hours," he said.
The communities spread along the Alaska coastline are mostly traditional Native settlements, with a few hundred to a few thousand inhabitants, and no roads linking communities.
The last time forecasters saw something similar was in November 1974, when Nome also took the brunt of the storm. That surge measured more than 13 feet, pushing beach driftwood above the level of the previous storm of its type in 1913.
Wednesday's storm surge is expected to cause beach erosion and flooding and may push Norton Bay ice on shore, forecasters said.
The village of Point Hope, which sits on the tip of a peninsula with the Arctic Ocean on one side and the Bering Sea on the other, is particularly vulnerable at just 7 to 8 feet above sea level.
The Inupiat Eskimo village of about 700 people has no sea wall and no evacuation road. If evacuation becomes necessary, everyone will go to the school because it sits on higher ground and is big enough to accommodate everyone, Mayor Steve Oomittuk said.
Posing an additional threat is the lack of sea ice off northwestern Alaska, forecasters said.
In the 1974 storm, the sea surface was much more frozen.
"History tells that the sea ice helps subdue the storm surge," Andy Brown, lead forecaster for the NWS, said. "With no sea ice there, we could see the full brunt of that 6- to 9-foot storm surge."
Arctic sea ice this year reached the second-lowest coverage since satellite records began in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.
Federal, state and local agencies were making emergency preparations in advance of the storm. The state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management set up an incident command, with numerous agencies coordinating responses.
The U.S. Coast Guard said it has staged helicopters in the region and sent a cutter to prepare for emergency responses, with a special focus on the crab-fishing fleet.
Numerous government agencies have set up an incident command, said Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Although the region is sparsely populated, the storm presents significant dangers, Alaska Senator Mark Begich said in a written statement.
"I realize we are in a remote part of the country, but many people and communities are in harm's way," Begich said.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45218633/ns/weather/
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