Skagway and Nome residents describe warmer, wetter winters and less predictable storms

In Skagway, people used to be able to count on a cold winter, strong north winds and enough snow to ski in town. People living in Skagway and Nome, Alaska, interviewed for a National Park Service series on change in Alaska's national parks, say that is no longer true. Their accounts, summarized here without names, describe winters that are warmer and wetter, storms that arrive from new directions, and travel that has to be planned differently.

Warmer winters

Early-season snow on mountains near Skagway. NPS

Everyone interviewed in both towns agreed winters are getting warmer. In Skagway that has meant years without enough snow for cross-country skiing, or so much rain that rivers flood and block a favorite hunting spot or trail. Residents there describe more rain and less snow, and repeated freeze-thaw cycles that make icing conditions. One long-time resident recalled temperatures of twenty or twenty-two below, with howling winds that lasted for a stretch; now it might reach four below, with the strong winds but far less snow. Others said snow that falls now thaws quickly, that the ponds and river no longer freeze enough for ice skating, and that skiers have to go up to the mountains.

In Nome, warmer winters mean lake, river and sea ice that is too thin and weak for safe winter travel. A Nome resident said storms used to come from the north and bring blizzards with deep drifts surrounded by bare ground; more storms now come from the south, wetter, with heavy snowfall and even rain, and the drifts fall differently.

Storms with no pattern

Walking along an exposed ridge toward Laughton Glacier near Skagway. NPS

Skagway typically has strong, cold winds blowing down the valley off the glaciers, and there used to be a predictable pattern. With climate change the wind direction is less consistent and winter and summer storms are altered, which makes activities harder to plan. A Skagway resident said that the winds used to be out of the north or northwest in winter and the south or southeast in summer, but some years before the interview a southeast wind in midwinter was a surprise, and since then the winds have been extremely variable. Another said storms seem a little stronger when they arrive.

More rain, more erosion

A steel bridge on the Chilkoot Trail in Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park was washed downstream as the river widened during unusually heavy rainstorms from October 1 to 13, 2022. The gap it left is one the bridge likely won't be able to span in the future. NPS

Stronger, warmer storms bring more rain and wind to Skagway and increase coastal and river erosion. The Taiya River, also called the Dyea River, flows 17 miles from Chilkoot Pass at the U.S.-Canada border into upper Lynn Canal. In recent years it has flooded more times than in all its recorded history. Its heavy flow is eating away the bank at the old Dyea Townsite, taking pieces of history with it. A twenty-foot record flood in October 2022 damaged the Chilkoot Trail and its bridges and left the route impassable; the trail was expected to stay closed for at least a year for repairs.

Nome residents also report warmer, shorter winters with less snow and more rain. A resident of Nome explained one consequence: freezing rain coats everything and turns into ice, and in a year with little snow that ice covers the lichen caribou depend on, so they have to dig for it. Lemmings, which live on the tundra's surface and hibernate under the snow, have trouble finding food and getting into their burrows.

Travel and hunting

Winter has traditionally been the prime travel season in the Arctic. In summer, wet, uneven tundra tussocks and many lakes and rivers make travel hard, while frozen rivers, lakes and sea ice give dog teams, snowmachines and all-terrain vehicles a smooth, fast surface. Without frozen ground, ice and snow, winter travel can be impossible. These corridors are vital to rural communities like Nome, whose residents have lived for generations on hunting, fishing and trapping, and not reaching subsistence foods at the right season can have severe personal and cultural effects. Less snow has a small upside, too: less shoveling, and a resident remembered snowdrifts once nearly burying the houses on a seaward street.

Wind and storms are also key to travel choices in Nome, where nobody wants to be caught in a ground blizzard with zero visibility far from home. Iñupiat hunters are known for expert navigation across sea ice and tundra, for knowing wind patterns and for predicting storms. People now report shifts in wind direction and a more variable storm pattern, so even expert travelers must develop new understandings of key environmental factors.

Views differ. An Iñupiaq hunter said in 2020 that because winter storms bring less snow, they are less severe than in the 1970s and 1980s, so he could hunt more often and without blinding snow and large drifts on the trail. Since 2020, though, some Nome residents feel snowfall and dangerous blizzards have increased, especially in the winter of 2023, when storm after storm blew in off the Bering Sea. A lack of snow also frustrates biologists doing aerial surveys: it is hard to spot brown muskoxen or moose against brown vegetation, and dark animals show up so much better on white snow. And one Nome resident felt there had been more thunder and lightning in the five or six years before the interview, in a place that typically sees neither.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Weather", from the series "Observing Change in Alaska's National Parks", which draws on interviews with residents of the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park areas (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/akprjjukeweather.htm); the interviewees' names and the snowmobile photograph are left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.