The Morning After: Alaska Bering Sea Storm

   The view in my backyard hasn't changed.

Well here it is, the morning after the expected apocalypse and everything seams fine. The winds last night were atrocious and had the house shaking on its very foundation, but we didn’t wake up in the land of OZ.

We are inland 75 miles from the Bering Sea so it seems we didn’t get the full brunt of the storm. So far I have not heard of any major flooding on our immediate coastal area. Even Nome was relatively dry. As far as water and ice coming into town as predicted, so far there has just been some roof damage and one village lost power. That is about the extent of it, from what I have heard. The winds here this morning are calm, but a lot of our snow is gone. It simply blew away from the high winds we had last night. The temps have warmed and the morning is gun metal gray. So we can expect some more snow or possibly rain yet today, or yet another wave from the storm to wrap around and hit us again before all is said and done.

Folks here are used to these storms. They roll in as old remnants of Japanese typhoons. Often times they are from the tropical storms that come to die in the western Bering Sea. Much like the salmon, they soon lose strength and become just another snow storm or rain and high winds.

And yet some are very much alive, and can pound our small villages on the west coast.

As long as there is not high water rolling through the main streets, the villages are pretty much bullet proof against these storms. As they have endured others just like it and are still standing. Sometimes I look at some of the old buildings in town and wonder in amazement how they are still standing after such a storm, despite there leaning like the Tower of Pisa even before the onset of the storm.

Around the village life will go on as normal. People will go to the post office despite no mail plane yesterday. The local store will be open for business. Even school is on for the kids. Most locals will say it was nothing really, just another storm, and wonder why all the international media hype. They will go about their normal daily lives. The nets will be checked, the wood chopped, as any another day in the life of the village.