Source:
Anchorage Daily News Villages and towns across Alaska's western and northwest coasts braced Tuesday for a winter megastorm that the National Weather Service says could be among the worst on record.
Forecasters warned of life-threatening surf, wind and snow clobbering villages along the Bering and Chukchi sea coasts Tuesday night and today. Some villagers moved to higher ground. Officials in Nome evacuated half of the city's Front Street, the famous finish line of the Iditarod Trail.
"These things get named hurricanes down south and get a category. It's that magnitude," said Jeff Osiensky, regional warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service. The storm was expected to hit across hundreds of miles of coastline, with the worst expected from the Yukon River Delta all the way north to the Arctic Coast.
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"There was a big rush at the store today to get water," said Elmer Davis, a former police officer who lives in the village of Shishmaref, which has seen extensive coastal erosion.
"I don't get scared too easy," he said, "and this sounds like Armageddon."
Read more:
http://www.adn.com/2011/11/08/2161340/western-alaska-coast-residents.html
The administration just approved offshore drilling in this area. I wonder if this will wake them up to the dangers. Nearest Coast Guard station is over 1,000 miles away.