DD2's former home in Alaska, Cordova, has gotten hammered this winter. This town has no stoplights, one gas station and access only by boat or plane. Most winters are mild compared to places such as Nome or even Anchorage. This is extreme.

Story on MSNBC,com.

A video shot by one her friends last week. It's snowed even more over the weekend.

Cordova AK

DD2's reaction? She wishes she was there to take in the experience.

Oy!

Great video. I'm passing it on.

ABC Evening news ran part of the video this evening and talked briefly with Rochelle who is originally from Australia.

Several avalanches had closed the road to the airport which was closed anyway. The NG showed up via ferry today.

Cordova is located at the East side of Prince William Sound. It has a heavily marine influced climate. It generally has milder temperatures than Anchorage, but it typically gets a LOT more precipitaion, both rain and snow. While this winter has been exceptional, big snows are not uncommon. In late January of 2000, a big avalanche hit the town, destroyed several houses, and left one person dead and one injured.

We have also had a rather heavy snow year in Anchorage, but nothing like Cordova.

Interesting, I was wondering who got the snow. I live on the prairies where it is 20*C warmer than usual for January and less than a centimetre of snow!

Sounds like Nome is locked in a deep, deep freeze. I was just reading this article about isolated towns running out of heating oil and gasoline. People are resorting to burning their own possessions to keep warm until more supplies can get in. Yikes!

Wow, looks like those frontier towns have become completely dependent on just-in-time fuel shipments. I would've thought having 6 months extra supplies (food, fuel) would be the norm.

I understand the local ski area at Cordova is closed - too much snow....

Agree, in remote places it would seem sensible for TPTB to keep at least a 6 month reserve of fuel and basic foodstuffs.
Prudent persons should keep their own at least 6 month reserve IN ADDITION to any emergency stocks held by the authorities.

Cordova's harbor is normally open year round and they do not have a food/fuel issue at present from what I've heard. In fact the NG troops came in on the ferry on Monday. Nome was to receive it's winter fuel delivery some months ago but a massive storm prevented the fuel barge from arriving while the ocean passage was open to barge traffic.

Many Alaskans in small towns also count on subsistance fishing and hunting to provide food for their families for the winter. Cordova sits on the Copper River Watershed which is an important salmon fishing and hatchery area. Putting up smoked salmon is something nearly all the residents do. And it is tasty!

Copper River Red Salmon (aka Copper River "Sockeye") is awesome, whether smoked, broiled, or whatever. Alaska has many kinds of Salmon, from many rivers, but Copper River Reds are my favorite!

The only Alaska salmon I have had is whatever is available near Talkeetna, but it was delicious! So, are there salmon connoisseurs like wine and tea specialists?

If it was caught near Talkeetna it was probably a King Salmon (aka Chinook to those of you in the Pacific NW). Indeed there are salmon connoisseurs. Kings are very good, but many people consider Reds the best. Silver Salmon (aka Coho) are also excellent. We also have Pink Salmon (ak Humpies) which are mostly canned, but are also tasty if cooked right after they are caught.

They all differ somewhat in flavor, oiliness, color of the meat, etc.

Actually, we really don't know the nature of the shortage in any of these places, so let's reserve judgement on how poorly prepared any of these places are.

From one article, it sounds like many of these places get one large shipment of heating oil or gasoline at the start of winter to last them through the whole season. Storage costs money and I doubt many of these residents are rolling in money, and receiving one big shipment may be the only economical way to get that much fuel into these remote communities. The problem this year is that the weather has delayed/blocked that shipment, plus it has been brutally frigid.

Like the article said, people are burning furniture because it's too cold and dangerous to collect firewood outside. If it's too cold for hardy Alaskans to go outside, you know it's cold!

[quote=ArneyLike the article said, people are burning furniture because it's too cold and dangerous to collect firewood outside. If it's too cold for hardy Alaskans to go outside, you know it's cold! [/quote]

If your talking about Nome, there's no firewood outside to collect. The article, missed that many of these rural towns are on the tundra and have no supply of normal fuels. The major exception is Point Lay where they "only" have to go about 20 miles over the tundra to dig coal out of a seam.

Respectfully,

Jerry

No, not Nome in particular. I forget the names of these smaller towns or villages from the article, but the reporter gives the impression that the residents could try to collect firewood outside, but that it's just too cold to spend much time outside.

You are probably thinking of Noatak and Kobuk. Two recent articles are here and here. As was mentioned by someone else above, these are native villages that rely heavily on subsitance, and the people tend to have little cash income. A six months supply of fuel held in reserve would be far beyond the means of most people out there.

These places are out on the tundra, with relatively little, if any wood growing locally. When they talk about gathering wood, they are often referring to gathering driftwood that floats down the bigger rivers from far upstream.

When ambient temperatures get into the minus 40 degree range, the air services often don't like to fly, except in dire emergency. Extreme low temperatures are very hard on the aircraft and significantly increase the danger in flying. Bush flying in Alaska is already dangerous enough in the best of conditions.

With a Coast Guard icebreaker leading the way, it's a slow slog but the Russian fuel tanker is approaching. The harbor is frozen so they're going to try and string a mile long hose from the tanker to Nome. If they succeed, it will be Nome's first offshore fuel transfer in winter.

Sounds like tricky stuff from reading this article. Actually, at -34 below zero (Fahrenheit, Celsius, it's all the same at that temp) pretty much any activity outdoors must be difficult.

From the article:

So, sounds like even missing their November shipment, they still had a significant stockpile of fuel. Of course, they burn through it faster with this record cold.

This may be a dumb question, but how did the pioneers live out there with no fuel shipments and no wood to burn?

Not a dumb question at all. The various native groups (Aleut, Alutiq, Yupik, Inuit, etc) have inhabited the treeless northern regions from the Aleutian Islands to Greenland for thousands of years. Related groups live in the Russian arctic. Needless to say, there were many variations to adapt to local conditions, but in general they lived in very small groups. They tended to be semi nomadic, following food sources. They were mostly dependent on hunting.

Permanent houses tended to be some form of very small, low, sod covered house. Rafters might be driftwood, or on some coasts where there was little or no driftwood they would use whalebones to support the roof. They burned seal oil for cooking and warmth. In a few areas they were able to gather coal from outcrops, and they burned that. When traveling to hunt, they used tents, or snow shelters. The "igloo" is one variation, though not all groups used igloos. In many ways their adaptation to this incredibly harsh environment is amazing, but there is no doubt that life was very hard in the old days!

The current villages are much larger, and date from after contact with whites. Whalers brought western tools, firearms, and other goods. Missionaries built churches, trading posts, and schools, and encouraged the native peoples to gather in much larger fixed villages. Some areas remained traditional longer than others. As is often the case, progress was a mixed blessing, but the northern population is much larger now.

Many early explorers haughtily refused to learn and adopt native ways in the far north, and paid a severe price for their ignorance. (The classic example was the Franklin Expedition, all 128 of whom starved to death.) Other explorers learned to adopt native methods and did much better.

Some good sources on early native life are the several books by the explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson. (Stefansson was one who did learn and adopt native ways.) During WW2 he did work for the US military, trying to prepare soldiers for fighting in arctic conditions. He wrote a book for the Army called "Arctic Manual". It is classic and long out of print. It was reprinted at least once in 1984 as "Arctic Survival", and you might be able to find a used copy.

Another good source are the several books by Richard K. Nelson. He is an anthropologist who studied the Inuit ("Eskimo") in Alaska from 1964 to 1966, while some of the old ways were still in use, or still remembered by elders. He wrote the classic "Hunters of the Northern Ice" (1972), also out of print but you might find one on Amazon. One of my favorite books is Nelson's "Shadow of the Hunter", which is I believe still in print. It is a semi fictional series of vignettes taking Inuit hunters through the seasons. Another good book by Nelson is "Hunters of the Northern Forest" about the native peoples of the forested lands of Alaska.

Kind of a short summary of a very broad topic, but I hope it helps.

Thanks AKSAR, very interesting. Gonna see if I can track down those books you mentioned. Looks like perfect reading material for camping.

Veering a bit off course here, but Stefansson brought the idea from his time in the north that you could be perfectly healthy eating a diet devoid of all fruits and vegetables and just eating game (I forget exactly what game he ate, and whether he also ate fish).

He participated in a famous experiment at Bellvue Hospital in NYC where they locked him up and only fed him raw meat (and by "meat" I don't mean just the lean, red meat, otherwise you run into the "rabbit starvation" problem) for almost a year IIRC and he was the picture of health.

Of course, the population in Nome alone would wipe out all the wild animals in the vicinity if they tried to eat that way today.

Apparently Kobuk and Noatak have recieved their fuel shipment. Prior to the latest air shipment, villagers made a chilly trip to the Red Dog Mine, 23 miles away, to get fuel to tide them over:

"The latest Red Dog fuel day for Noatak took place on the day the village store ran out of diesel. So villagers formed a convoy of about 30 snowmobiles and freight sleds, and headed out in weather marked by temperatures of 47 below and, for the first 10 miles, dense fog......"

Meanwhile, at Nome they are preparing to lay a hose across the sea ice to start pumping fuel from the tanker. The tanker arrived yesterday, and is about 1/2 mile offshore.

Just a quick update. DD2 spent a few weeks in Cordova in February and early March. It hasn't stopped snowing there, averaging 6-12" every few days. This photo is from her friends at Fish & Game who spent a day with shovels and a Bobcat digging out one of their seine net trailers. The fellow in the picture is a little over 6' tall.