said University of Alaska climate specialist Rick Thoman. <\/a><\/p>\n\t\t\t\tInstead of feeding off warm ocean, the growing storm fed off air-temperature differences and developing cold and warm fronts.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“That transition meant Merbok was much larger in size in the Bering Sea than it was as a typhoon,” Thoman said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
He explained: “Shortly before transition, Typhoon Merbok had storm-force winds extending about 100 miles southeast of the center. In contrast, as ex-Merbok passed west of the Pribilof (islands), the storm-force winds extended 300 miles southeast of the center.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“This huge wind field acted as a plow pushing water north and eastward until it ran into the Alaska coast,” Thoman said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The storm impacted a great swath of Alaska, from just north of Bristol Bay to north of Bering Strait, flooding low portions of villages and many fishing and hunting camps along miles and miles of coastline.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
That’s a big deal, Thoman wrote in a piece for the conversation.com:<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Winter is coming, and the time when it’s feasible to make repairs is running short. This is also the middle of hunting season, which in western Alaska is not recreation — it’s how you feed your family.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Less than two weeks later, as far in America as you can get from Alaska, Hurricane Ian was pounding southwest Florida. Hal leaning out of the parking garage, measuring 100 mile-per-hour winds. He was also wondering if he should pull on his motorcycle helmet for protection from flying things.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
• Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell ned.rozell@alaska.edu is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlike the giant storm that hit Alaska in mid-September, hurricanes and typhoons both have eyes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":91713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[149,568,123],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-91712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-outdoors","tag-column","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91712"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=91712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/a>